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FIRST PRINCIPLES 
 
 OP 
 
 MORAL SCIENCE 
 
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 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M. 
 AT THE UNIVER8ITY PBE6S. 
 
FIRST PEINCIPLES 
 
 MORAL SCIENCE, 
 
 A COURSE OF LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 Wbz ©totasttg of aDarofcrfoge 
 
 THOMAS RAWSON BIRKS, 
 
 JKNIGHTBRIDGE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
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 Honfcon : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1873, 
 
 [-4$ Rights reserved,] 
 
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PBEFACE. 
 
 This small volume contains the substance of a first course 
 of Lectures, delivered in October and November 1872, 
 in partial fulfilment of the honourable trust a few months 
 earlier confided to me, after the lamented death of 
 Professor Maurice. 
 
 The subjects formally assigned to the Knightbridge 
 Professor are Moral Philosophy, Casuistry, and Moral 
 Theology. The first and third of these scarcely need any 
 exposition of their meaning. The second was viewed by 
 Dr Whewell as an historical term, now superseded by the 
 more general and comprehensive phrase, Moral Philosophy. 
 On the other hand Professor Maurice, while he looks on 
 the solution of cases of conscience as impossible, applies 
 the name of Casuistry to that subjective side of Moral 
 Science, which enforces the claims of the personal "I," 
 the individual conscience. This subject, though highly 
 important in itself, does not seem to me, whether in history 
 or by etymology, to answer to the name. But I think it 
 may be transferred, by a moderate license, from doubtful 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 and disputed questions in the details of Moral Duty, to 
 Controversial Ethics, or the attempt to gain clear and 
 firm convictions on those great questions, which give birth 
 to rival schools of ethical teaching, and have perplexed 
 and divided the judgments of moralists for thousands of 
 years. 
 
 The present work treats of three topics, all preliminary 
 to the direct exposition of the first of these three main 
 subjects, Moral Philosophy. These are the Certainty and 
 Dignity of Moral Science, its Spiritual Geography, or 
 relation to other main subjects of human thought, and 
 its Formative Principles, or some elementary truths on 
 which its whole development must depend. In the coming 
 year I propose to myself to enter on the second subject, 
 or Controversial Ethics ; by a review, first, of Modern 
 Utilitarianism, as expounded by Paley and Bentham, and 
 recast by Mr Mill into a different form ; and next, of mo- 
 dern Cambridge Ethics, represented by the Discourse of 
 Professor Sedgwick, and the writings of my three eminent 
 predecessors. In Mr Mill's review of Professor Sedgwick 
 these two schools came first into direct collision, almost 
 forty years ago; and now in the present year, within a 
 few months, these distinguished writers have both passed 
 away. The harsher sounds of controversy should be 
 stilled, and only its grave and gentle utterances be 
 heard, over the recent graves of the dead. 
 
 I have ventured to append to these Lectures a college 
 essay or declamation, delivered in Trinity College Chapel 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 in December 1833, or just forty years ago. I believe 
 that the thoughts it contains, however youthful the style, 
 are seasonable and important at the present hour. They 
 secured at the time a favourable notice from Dr Chalmers 
 and some other distinguished men. But I reproduce 
 them here for a double reason. They are a pledge that 
 the views held in the present volume, and others which 
 may follow, are no hasty product of recent study, but 
 convictions early formed, and deepened by all the study 
 and reflection of so many years. Its date is just one 
 year after Professor Sedgwick's Discourse, and a few 
 months after its publication. It may thus be taken as 
 one further sign of a reaction against the selfish and 
 utilitarian school of ethical teaching, which had then set 
 in, alike among older and younger members of the uni- 
 versity, and which has continued to the present day, 
 
 I commit this work, as a small sheaf of first-fruits, 
 to the candid and forbearing perusal of learned readers; 
 but still more to the blessing of Him, without whom 
 nothing is strong, nothing is holy, the only Fountain of 
 moral insight and true wisdom, the uncreated and eternal 
 Goodness, in whom all truth dwells in its perfect fulness, 
 from whom its streams proceed, and to whom they return, 
 after watering the wide universe of moral being through 
 which they flow. 
 
 Trinity Parsonage, 
 Camrridge, 
 
 September, 1873. 
 
OF THE 
 
 'u'hiversitt; 
 
 4«: 
 
 or 
 
 ggy 
 
 LECTUKE I. 
 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 In entering on the duties of the Knightbridge Pro- 
 fessorship, I have endeavoured, in my Inaugural Lecture, 
 to point out the great importance of the systematic study 
 of Moral Science in the days in which we live. It is 
 natural to begin this first course of Lectures with some 
 remarks on the main outlines of the subject, and the 
 order of treatment I hope to pursue. This seems doubly 
 needful, when I succeed to writers so eminent as Dr Whe- 
 well and Professor Maurice. They have left behind them, 
 besides four volumes of published Lectures, a full and 
 detailed History of Moral Philosophy, ancient and modern, 
 and a systematic treatise on the Elements of Morality. 
 And still they vary considerably from each other in their 
 construction of the titles by which this Professorship is 
 defined, and in their methods of ethical exposition. 
 
 The original subject, by the deed of the founder, 
 Dr Knightbridge, is "Moral Theology, or Casuistical 
 Divinity." But when Dr Whewell, on his election in 
 June 1838, revived the office from a loug and deep 
 slumber, he introduced in his first Lecture the name 
 
 B. L. 1 
 
2 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 " Moral Philosophy ", as well adapted, in his view, to 
 express " the substitution of a newer form of science, full 
 of life, hope, interest, and solid truth, for older and more 
 imperfect speculations." " I shall reckon," he says, " on 
 the implied sanction of the University, in considering 
 myself as Professor of Moral Philosophy, a branch of study 
 of which a Professorship exists, I believe, in every Univer- 
 sity but our own." The sanction implied at first, was 
 afterwards expressly and publicly given, when the Univer- 
 sity made a later addition to the original endowment. 
 
 Dr Whewell began with a course of Lectures on the 
 English Moralists from Hobbes to Paley, Gisborne, and 
 Price, at the close of last century. To these, when pub- 
 lished, six others were added on Bentham's works ; and in 
 a second edition, in 1862, fourteen others, which began 
 with Plato and ended with Coleridge. His second and 
 main work, published in 1846, was the "Elements of 
 Morality," a full and systematic treatise on Moral Science. 
 It was followed, the same year, by eight "Lectures on 
 Systematic Morality," and appeared anew in 1864, shortly 
 before his death, in an enlarged and revised edition. 
 
 The Third Book of the Elements includes a full treat- 
 ment of Ethics in their religious aspect, or Moral Theology. 
 But Casuistry, in Dr Whe well's view, holds quite a 
 secondary place in Christian Morals. It refers, he says, 
 to "questions of human conduct, in which conflicting 
 duties, or obscurity in the application of moral rales, 
 perplex and distort the faculty which judges of right and 
 wrong." It is thus "neither the main part" of the general 
 subject, "nor that from which it can with propriety derive 
 its name." 
 
 Prof. Maurice, on the other hand, in his opening 
 Lecture, seems to regard Casuistry, Moral Philosophy, and 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 3 
 
 Moral Theology, as three distinct and successive stages of 
 Moral Science, which fitly express its personal, social, and 
 religious elements. He appears further to assume that 
 these titles of the office are a guiding light, which the 
 University itself has supplied, to fix the limitations of the 
 main subject, and the due and proper order of its exposi- 
 tion. He had published, twenty years before his election, 
 an instructive treatise on the history of Mental and Moral 
 Philosophy, and it has since appeared, in a revised and 
 enlarged form, as his latest work. It was natural for him, 
 then, to abstain in his Lectures from this branch of the 
 main subject, and to confine himself to a more direct 
 treatment of moral questions. His first course, accord- 
 ingly, was on the Conscience, under the title of " Lectures 
 on Casuistry," and his second on Social Morality. Had his 
 life been spared, we may assume that a third would have 
 followed on Moral Theology. But he remarks that he 
 had found it impracticable fc> maintain entire distinctness, 
 and that Moral Theology had really intruded into both. 
 "It must be so," he observes, "for any one w T ho discovers, 
 beneath the conscience which testifies of our personal 
 existence, and beneath all the order of human society, a 
 Divine foundation." 
 
 Dr Whewell, then, has unfolded Ethical Science 
 mainly on its objective side, as a connected and very 
 extensive scheme of thought, under the heads of Springs 
 of Action, Morality, Religion, Eights and Obligations, 
 Polity and International Law. But in such an outline, 
 however ably filled, there may be some danger of the 
 conscience finding itself oppressed, like David in Saul's 
 armour, by a panoply of solid and laborious thought, too 
 heavy for its weakness to sustain. A treatment less com- 
 plete and exhaustive, but appealing more directly to the 
 
 1—2 
 
4 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 spontaneous emotions of the heart, like arrows from the 
 bow, or stones from the sling, must therefore have been 
 desirable at least as a supplement for common minds. 
 
 Prof. Maurice, accordingly, took up in his first course 
 the subjective side of Ethics. He sought earnestly to 
 bring out into full relief the "I ought " of conscience, to 
 protest against theories which would resolve it into the 
 mere dread of human punishment, and to summon it, by 
 a direct appeal to the consciousness of its own supremacy, 
 to the pursuit of high and noble aims. An awakened 
 conscience, fully alive to the claims of duty, which looks 
 up with reverence to a law it cannot alter and is bound 
 to obey, is the first essential of true morality, the only 
 genuine passport to the temple of ethical science. Where 
 this is absent, learned speculations on moral theories, and 
 on schools of ancient and modern thought, become im- 
 moral trifling, bewildering to the reason, and deadening 
 to the heart. m 
 
 But while the subject of these Lectures is, I conceive, a 
 most suitable and needful supplement to Dr Whewell's 
 more systematic work, I do not think that they are 
 "Lectures on Casuistry," either in the sense of the founder, 
 or in the well-known and historical meaning of the name. 
 The earnest inculcation of thorough conscientiousness in all 
 cases, and under all sacrifices, is indeed of vital and almost 
 supreme importance to the moral student. It is the 
 starting-point of genuine progress, the living sap in the 
 tree of Ethical Science. But Casuistry in its proper sense, 
 or the provision of rules for the guidance of such a con- 
 science in doubtful and obscure cases, is widely different. 
 One is like the root of the fruitful olive-tree, the other 
 is the gleaning berries on its outmost branches, when the 
 harvest has already been gathered in. 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 5 
 
 The threefold title of the Professorship may be adopted, 
 I think, with less violence to the real distinctions of the 
 subject, in another way, without disturbing their order, or 
 using Casuistry in a sense wholly diverse from its historical 
 meaning. Moral Theology, instead of being included, as 
 in Dr Whewell's work, midway in the course, should be 
 reserved, as the highest division, for the crown and climax 
 of the whole. Philosophy deals with the conclusions of 
 human reason, aided and enlightened by Revelation, but 
 acting still within the limits of that Divine appeal — "Yea, 
 and why even of yourselves judge ye not that which is 
 right?" Theology deals with the character and works of 
 God, as made known to us more clearly and fully by 
 Divine revelation. And thus Moral Theology is the meet- 
 ing-place and border province of these two kingdoms of 
 thought. It deals with the religious aspect of Moral 
 Philosophy, and the ethical aspect of Revealed Religion. 
 It binds these together in a higher synthesis, where reason 
 is ennobled and purified by faith in a Divine message ; 
 while faith itself, cleansed from mere superstition, offers to 
 God a reasonable service, and sees light in the light of 
 heaven. 
 
 Moral Philosophy, thus defined, must include the sub- 
 jective and objective side of Ethics, the enforcement of the 
 claims and supremacy of conscience, and the whole range 
 of social morality; or, in one word, all the direct and 
 positive teaching of Moral Science. What place, then, is 
 left for Casuistry ? In the strict and proper sense, Dr 
 Whewell justly regards it as a very subordinate branch of 
 the general subject. The difficulties, also, to which it 
 relates are more likely to seek and find their solution from 
 the pastor or the friend than from academical lectures. 
 And Professor Maurice, even while he retains the term, 
 
6 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 seems wholly to abolish the science or art itself, since he 
 holds that attempts to lay down rules for cases of con- 
 science " only leave those cases more unsettled than ever." 
 But if doubts and questionings, in the present day, are 
 mainly transferred from curious and involved cases, where 
 the path of duty is obscure, to the very foundations of 
 morality, we may come near to the true design of the 
 founder by retaining the title in a somewhat varied sense. 
 Casuistry will thus refer to the polemical aspect of moral 
 questions, and deal with those controversies and disputes 
 which tend to cloud and perplex the minds of students, 
 and are constant attendants on every imperfect stage of a 
 progressive science. 
 
 I propose, then, to arrange the general subject under these 
 three main divisions : 1st, Direct Ethics, or Moral Science 
 in its relation to other sciences, its fundamental principles, 
 and the wide range of personal and social obligations, in- 
 cluding some first lessons of religious faith and duty ; 2ndly, 
 Controversial Ethics, answering nearly to Casuistry, or the 
 inquiry into the debateable ground of Morals, and the dis- 
 cussion of rival and conflicting systems; and, 3rdly, Moral 
 Theology, a wide and interesting, as well as difficult, field 
 of thought. For here an awakened conscience and intelli- 
 gent Christian faith act and react on each other. The con- 
 science tests pretended revelations by laws of its own, 
 while it submits reverently to the authority of a Divine 
 message. It can thus learn new facts and lessons of God's 
 moral government, grow more fully instructed as to its 
 own nature and the duties and hopes of man, as responsi- 
 ble to his Maker, and- walk in the light of a teaching 
 higher and even purer than its own. Here, also, an intelli- 
 gent, but sober and reverent, faith brings its unsolved and 
 perplexing problems, in messages that claim a Divine 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. J 
 
 origin, to be examined in the light of a purified reason, 
 and to be solved even here, when the answer is possible, for 
 our present comfort, and the due strengthening of its own 
 powers. But when such a solution is too hard for present 
 attainment, it is the further office of Moral Theology to 
 remind us of the limitations of our moral insight, while 
 we see "as in a mirror, darkly"; and to encourage us 
 to wait hopefully, and not impatiently, for clearer light ; 
 whether the blessing may be given in the world's eventide, 
 or only in that brighter morning, when the day shall break 
 on the immortal spirit, and the shadows of the night shall 
 flee away. 
 
 These few remarks on the conflicting definitions of 
 Casuistry by the two most eminent of my predecessors, 
 and their differing arrangements of the whole subject, 
 seemed needful to explain and justify the order I propose 
 to follow. My purpose, in the present course, is to treat of 
 some first principles of Direct Ethics, or Moral Philosophy 
 in its narrower sense, under these two heads : its relation, 
 as in a moral geography, to other branches of human 
 knowledge, and its fundamental principles, or the courses 
 of solid masonry on which it rests below. And my first 
 subject will be the True Place and real dignity of Moral 
 Science. 
 
 There is a school of thought, in our own days, which, 
 under the boasted name of Scientific Progress, would wholly 
 abolish all Theology, and reduce Morals to a dependent 
 and precarious existence, in which it becomes the vassal 
 and slave of Physics or Human Anatomy. And its 
 strength, in popular esteem, has been derived, in no small 
 measure, from its attempted classification of every de- 
 partment of human science. The instinctive craving after 
 unity, never wholly asleep, has been wakened into new 
 
8 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 and more intense activity by the discoveries of the last 
 hundred years. Many run to and fro. The bonds of 
 commercial intercourse are interlaced and strengthened. 
 Nations learn thus to look beyond themselves, and re- 
 cognize dimly a wider and larger brotherhood of all man- 
 kind. The same influence extends to the mutual relations 
 of the sciences themselves. The various branches of in- 
 tellectual speculation and thought borrow from each other, 
 and melt into each other, more and more. Thus Astronomy 
 borrows from Mechanics, Optics, Electricity and Mag- 
 netism, and even of late from Chemistry, the means 
 for its further and wider progress. Geographical re- 
 search becomes more exhaustive, and geological inquiry 
 deeper, more profound, and more various than before. 
 Both of these alike borrow largely from Zoology and 
 Botany, and lend to these sciences rich and copious 
 materials in return. Heat is identified with motion, and 
 becomes a subtler branch of Mechanics. The magnet- 
 ism of the earth has its changes linked with solar phe- 
 nomena. Deep ocean soundings, made by new refine- 
 ments of instrumental skill, modify geological theories. 
 The same craving for comprehensiveness and unity reveals 
 itself in antiquarian pursuits, and modern researches into 
 the history of language and of race. It seems as if the 
 limbs of Science, torn asunder by ignorance, and violently 
 scattered, were striving to come together, and clothe 
 themselves with sinews and flesh once more, and thus to 
 form one living, united, and harmonious system. 
 
 In such a period of thought, any school which pro- 
 fesses to exhibit all the sciences in their orderly succession, 
 and to ground on that arrangement special theories and 
 deductions of its own, wields an engine of aggression on 
 a.11 rival systems of no common power. The combat is 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 9 
 
 like that between a regular army with its well-disciplined 
 battalions, and guerillas or volunteers without discipline 
 or concert, spread out in loose array. 
 
 Such a theory has arisen, it is well known, in French 
 Positivism, and, variously modified, has many disciples 
 or admirers among the cultivated classes of our own 
 land. But such a doctrinal system, which destroys and 
 proscribes all religious faith, and degrades morality into 
 a cerebral secretion, a blind necessity, or a pleasure- 
 seeking prudence, can only be met and overthrown by 
 one better and nobler ; by a system which retains what- 
 ever is true and sound in the lower fields of thought, 
 but includes in its larger geography those sacred heights 
 and mountain-tops of human science, which deal with 
 moral and spiritual objects, and pierce into the skies 
 above, while they command the widest and most com- 
 prehensive views of the peaceful valleys below. 
 
 Let us begin, then, by endeavouring to fix clearly the 
 true place of Ethics in the wide range of human science. 
 And here the scheme of Lord Bacon, in his De Augmentis, 
 supplies a basis, capable indeed of no slight improvement, 
 but from which the remarks of Locke, and the fuller sys- 
 tem of Comte, are really a retrogression and decline, rather 
 than an advance to clearer insight, and a more perfect and 
 comprehensive arrangement. 
 
 The first division of human knowledge, Bacon has well 
 observed, must be drawn from the threefold powers of the 
 rational soul, which is the seat of knowledge. History 
 belongs to the memory, Poetry to the fancy or imagi- 
 nation, and Philosophy to the reason. But here two 
 further remarks naturally arise. First, this division is 
 common alike to every branch of human thought, just as 
 breadth, in Geometry, coexists with the other dimensions 
 
IO THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 of space. It seems thus more natural and convenient, 
 instead of separating History and Poetry altogether from 
 the kindred branches of Philosophy, as Bacon has done, 
 to make this distinction subordinate to the main objective 
 divisions of Human Science. And next, in the case of 
 Natural Philosophy, the registration of natural pheno- 
 mena, which answers to history, and the invention of 
 hypotheses and development of their consequences, which 
 correspond to poetry, are properly quite subordinate to the 
 branch of science to which those phenomena and hypo- 
 theses belong. They form its materials, and supply the 
 means for its further progress. Tables of observations, 
 records of observed facts, registered stellar phenomena, 
 and the successive theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus, of 
 Kepler and Herschel, are thus the inseparable adjuncts 
 of astronomical science. 
 
 Science or Philosophy, as Bacon has well observed, 
 receives its primary and fundamental division from its 
 threefold object, " Deus, natura, homo." "It is convenient," 
 he adds, " that Philosophy be divided into three sciences, 
 concerning God, nature, and man." But when he has laid 
 this clear and simple foundation, he proceeds at once, 
 rather strangely, to deviate from the only true and natural 
 arrangement. He distinguishes inspired Theology wholly 
 from Philosophy, and reserves it for the last place at the 
 close of his treatise, as "the haven and sabbath of all 
 human contemplation." And yet he places Natural The- 
 ology, as a separate branch, first in the three main divisions 
 of Human Philosophy. 
 
 Such a scheme has plainly a double fault. It severs 
 Natural and Revealed Theology as widely as possible, 
 making them form the two extremes of the whole system. 
 But they are plainly mere subdivisions of the same grand 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. II 
 
 subject. The contrast implied in the names does not 
 extend to the truths themselves, but refers wholly to the 
 different means by which our knowledge of them is sup- 
 posed to be attained. And next, his plan involves a dis- 
 turbed order of the three divisions themselves, which are not 
 allowed to form either an ascending or a descending scale. 
 The truer plan of arrangement, in this respect, which 
 M. Comte has justly followed, is that of an ascending 
 series. Natural Theology, in Lord Bacon's outline of 
 sciences, should plainly be reserved for the third place, 
 near the close ; so as to prepare the way, by a gradual 
 ascent, for the fuller and higher teaching of Divine 
 Revelation. Nor should this be excluded from Philosophy. 
 It ought rather to be included in it as its highest and 
 noblest portion. For the genuine pursuit of wisdom, which 
 is the meaning of philosophy, can never rest short of the 
 vision of the Only Wise, or that " knowledge of the Holy" 
 (Prov. xxx. 3), which alone is true understanding and "life 
 eternal." 
 
 . Again, that "prima philosophia," which Lord Bacon 
 places as the common stem of the three main divisions, 
 seems to have no real claim to this high position. So 
 far as it is real, and not a mere play on words, or on 
 the analogies and ambiguities of human language, it be- 
 longs to some aspect or other of Natural Theology, and 
 the relations between the First Cause, the Creator, and the 
 whole universe of created things. 
 
 The first and main division, then, of Philosophy or 
 Science is threefold. Its first and lowest portion is Na- 
 tural Philosophy ; its second, Humanity ; its last and 
 highest, Theology, both Natural and Eevealed. This, too, 
 is the very order implied in the system of our ancient 
 universities. It is far more full, harmonious, and complete, 
 
12 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 than the maimed and imperfect substitutes which have 
 been proposed or invented in modern times. 
 
 Natural Philosophy is divided by Lord Bacon into 
 Speculative and Operative, and the Speculative into 
 Physical and Metaphysical. The former of these is said 
 to deal with the efficient cause and matter,] the other 
 with the final cause and form. Again, the Physical is 
 divided into three subjects, the Principles of things, the 
 World, and the Variety of things. It is further divided 
 into a doctrine of Concretes and Abstracts, the first 
 having the same divisions as Natural History. The Meta- 
 physical is divided into the doctrine of Forms and of 
 Final Causes. 
 
 Operative Physics, again, are parted into Mechanics, 
 and Magic in a revised sense of the term. This, in Bacon's 
 view of it, seems nearly to agree with the modern science 
 of Imponderables, since he defines it to be "a practical 
 knowledge of the more secret powers and subtle influences 
 of the natural world." Last of all, Mathematics, both 
 pure and mixed, are made a separate appendix of the 
 whole. • 
 
 Such an arrangement of Natural Science, it can hardly 
 be denied, leaves on the mind a vague and confused im- 
 pression. From the objective principle, clearly laid down 
 at first, we are thrown back on subjective divisions of a 
 wholly different kind, which are made to depend, in 
 part, on the abstractions of Greek philosophy. What 
 is called Operative Natural Philosophy really consists 
 in the application of natural knowledge to the wants of 
 mankind, and thus properly forms a part of the higher 
 subject of Humanity. Lord Bacon seems to have known 
 little of Mathematics, and, like Sir W. Hamilton, held 
 them in light esteem. Instead of being made an accidental 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 13 
 
 appendix of Physics, they ought rather to come first, as the 
 intellectual starting-point and basis of the whole scheme. 
 They are lowest, indeed, in dignity, though first in order of 
 ascent, but still claim a very high importance, because their 
 truths underlie every branch of Material Physics, and may 
 thus be justly held to be the foundation of the whole. 
 
 Mathematics, or the Science of Number, Space, Motion 
 and Force, will thus hold the first place in the natural 
 arrangement of the Physical Sciences. Next will come 
 Uranology, or the knowledge of the heavens, and all the 
 worlds they contain, whether suns, stars, planets, satellites, 
 or meteors, star-dust, and nebulous matter, spread through 
 the depths of space. Third in order will be Ecumeno- 
 logy, or the knowledge of the habitable world, a subject 
 in outward extent far more limited than the last, but also 
 far more accessible, and thus capable, practically, of a 
 fuller development, and of more various subdivision. It 
 includes three main classes of objects — lifeless matter, 
 plants, and animals or living things. The first may be 
 called Hylology, and is either analytic or synthetic. Phy- 
 sics, or Analytical Hylology, will include Solid Mechanics, 
 Hydrodynamics, Pneumatics, the doctrine of the Impon- 
 derables — Heat, Light, Electricity, and Magnetism — and 
 analytical Chemistry, or the determination of the laws 
 which distinguish the main classes of lifeless things. Geo- 
 gnosy, or Synthetic Hylology, will include Physical Geo- 
 graphy, Hydrography, Meteorology, and Geology; with 
 two appendices of Palaeontology, or the determination of 
 past changes, and the probable state of the Earth in every 
 former age ; and a corresponding science, still nameless, 
 and beyond the range of present human foresight, which 
 would include the prediction of all future changes in 
 distant ages still to come. 
 
14 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE, 
 
 Passing over the two higher divisions of Natural 
 Philosophy, Botany and Zoology, we come to a higher 
 subject, which holds the middle place in the ascending 
 series, and to which the words of Pope will apply — 
 The proper study of mankind is Man. 
 
 The leading division in the Be Augmentis of Lord Bacon 
 has here been reproduced by M. Comte under different 
 names. The Philosophy of Humanity and Civil Science, 
 in the former, answer very closely to Biology and Soci- 
 ology. The first is parted by Bacon into a science of the 
 Body and of the Soul. A third division is added, on the 
 State of Man, or his Personality, and the union of body 
 and soul. This, again, is made to include two parts, a 
 doctrine of the Miseries, and one of the Prerogatives of 
 Man. The Science of the Body is parted into four 
 divisions, relating to health, beauty, exercise and pleasure, 
 or a science of Medicine, Cosmetics, Athletics, and He- 
 donics. The Science of the Soul is parted into one of the 
 Substance and Faculties, and another on the use and 
 objects of those faculties. This latter is divided into 
 Logic and Ethics. Ethical Science is parted into a 
 doctrine on the Standard of Good, and another on the 
 Culture and Guidance of the Mind; and this last into 
 three portions, on Character, on the Affections, and on 
 Moral Remedies. 
 
 Civil Science, again, is ranked under three main 
 divisions. The first is the Science of Conversatiop, or 
 Social Intercourse; the second, of Business or Occupation; 
 and the third, on the Republic or Empire. To this brief 
 outline are added two supplements, on the fountain of 
 social right, and on enlargement of the bounds of empire. 
 
 A simpler arrangement, I conceive, may be based on 
 the ascending scale of human faculties or powers, and will 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 15 
 
 thus be in closer harmony with the main objective di- 
 vision of all science into Natural Philosophy, Humanity, 
 and Theologjr. 
 
 Humanity, or the Science of Man, in its widest sense 
 will include the knowledge of Human Action, Speech, and 
 Thought. Human Action will admit a fourfold distinction, 
 with reference to the individual, the outer world, the 
 family, and the state. These might perhaps be conve- 
 niently styled Autonomics, or the discipline and culture of 
 man's own person and bodily frame; Geonomics, including 
 agriculture, horticulture, zoonomy, or the culture of 
 animals, and navigation; Economics, or the science of 
 domestic and family life; and External Politics, or the 
 science of human action, when men are gathered in civil 
 societies of various kinds. The Science of Speech will 
 include Grammar, Lexicography, Oral and Written Lan- 
 guage, Semeiology, or various modifications, used as signs 
 of thought, such as Hieroglyphics, Stenography, Secret 
 "Writing and Telegraphy; and the higher branches of 
 Logic, Rhetoric, Dialectics, Education, Jurisprudence, 
 Literature, and Public Worship. The Science of Thought 
 will include Mental Philosophy in all its various aspects, 
 and is either Analytic or Synthetic. The first refers to the 
 different faculties and powers in each individual, and 
 includes a doctrine of Perception and Sensation, or the 
 relations of the mind to outward nature; of Reflection or 
 Self-knowledge, of Sympathy and human fellowship, and 
 of Religious Faith, aspiring to things unseen and eternal. 
 The Synthetic Science of Human Thought is that which 
 deals with the various characters and classes of mankind, 
 and all the diversities of sex, age, race, intelligence, 
 culture, and the countless varieties of human life and 
 feeling, of social and religious thought. 
 
1 6 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 But a Science of Humanity, when pursued within 
 these limits, does not satisfy the conditions of scientific 
 completeness. For it deals wholly with the actual, and 
 not the ideal. It contemplates Man as he has been or 
 now is, and not as he might be or ought to be. But 
 Man is conscious of powers of choice, on the use or abuse 
 of which his happiness very mainly depends. He is not a 
 mere tool or engine, set in motion by external powers, 
 over which he has no control. He has a knowledge of 
 good and evil, of evil which he seeks to avoid, and of good 
 which he dimly seeks after, and longs to attain. He feels 
 himself capable of progress and improvement, or of de- 
 generacy and decline. Herein he feels himself to differ 
 widely from lifeless matter, with its laws which it must 
 obey, and even from all the lower animals, though these 
 are gifted with wonderful instincts and powers of sponta- 
 neous motion. And thus there remains a higher field, 
 beyond and above all those branches of Human Science 
 which have now been briefly indicated, and coextensive 
 with their whole range. Man's nature is twofold. It 
 includes the consciousness of actual powers and capacities, 
 and the dim perception of a high and noble ideal, attain- 
 able, but not yet attained. This is well expressed in the 
 often- quoted lines — 
 
 Except above himself lie can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is Man! 
 
 Humanity, then, since it refers to a being far higher in 
 its powers than lifeless matter, or mere animal instinct, and 
 still far below Divine perfection, resolves itself necessarily 
 into two main divisions. The first is Actual Humanity, 
 or the knowledge of Man such as experience proves him 
 to be, in his various relations to nature, to his fellow-men, 
 and to the Unseen Power on whom his being depends. 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. \J 
 
 The second is Ethics or Ideal Humanity, the knowledge 
 of that high standard of perfect action, speech and 
 thought, below which men may fall continually, and too 
 often with a deplorable and melancholy contrast, but 
 towards which they are bound ever to aspire; and, aspiring 
 towards it with earnest desire and effort, may hope for its 
 fuller and fuller attainment. 
 
 Ethics, then, in one word is the Science of Ideal 
 Humanity. It sets before us Man, not as he is, but as 
 he ought to be. It implies a standard of right and wrong, 
 which does not depend on the actual state and conduct of 
 mankind, and is not fixed by past experience, but which 
 shines out amidst the storm-clouds of human passions and 
 vices like a rainbow of hope and promise, pointing onward 
 to something bright, excellent and glorious, not yet at- 
 tained. This science of Ideal Humanity is the true main- 
 spring of all human progress, which really deserves the 
 name. And it forms also the natural transition to the 
 best and highest field of human thought, Divine Theology. 
 The connection is no mere result of fancy, or philosophical 
 reasoning. It is inwoven into the very texture of Christian 
 faith. For this is the grand " mystery of godliness," on 
 which the whole fabric of the Christian revelation depends, 
 that the ideal Man is no other than the Incarnate Son of 
 God. 
 
 A clear view of the main outlines of human know- 
 ledge, and of their mutual relation, will thus enable us 
 not only to ascertain the true place, but to maintain the 
 dignity, of Moral Science. The arrangement of Lord 
 Bacon is in this respect very faulty and imperfect. It 
 would lead us to suppose that Ethics are a mere sub- 
 division of one subdivided branch of the doctrine of 
 Humanity ; that they come nearly midway in its course, 
 B. L, 2 
 
1 8 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 and form hardly one-tenth of the whole. But this is wholly 
 different from the real truth. They constitute a vast 
 and wide field of thought, conterminous with the whole 
 range of actual human knowledge. Throughout all the 
 wide expanse of human interests they prescribe a standard 
 of perfection to the actions, words, and thoughts of men, 
 towards which they are bound unceasingly to aspire. 
 
 Ethical Science is no mere product and corollary of 
 man's past experience. It is rather its needful antidote. 
 Its motto is evermore " Excelsior." It never permits this 
 standard to be torn from the staff, and trailed in the 
 mire of human corruption. It calls unceasingly on the 
 corrupt and the impure to awake and arise. Amidst 
 the strife of parties, the speculations of false philosophy, 
 and the seductions of sensual vice, its clear and solemn 
 voices are heard continually in such utterances as these : 
 " Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." " Speak 
 to the children of Israel that they go forward." " What- 
 soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
 report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
 think on these things." 
 
 This view of the true place and correct definition of 
 Ethics as the Science of Ideal Humanity agrees closely 
 with some striking remarks in Professor Grote's Exami- 
 nation, a posthumous work, full of careful and suggestive 
 thought. 
 
 "There is no moral logic which will teach us to con- 
 clude what should be, in the great features of it, from 
 what has been, and what is. If we do so conclude, it is in 
 a manner which destroys all our moral being. Man has 
 improved as he has, because certain portions of his race 
 have had in them the ideal element, have been unsatis- 
 fied with what to them at the time has been the positive, 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 19 
 
 the matter of fact, the immediately utilitarian ; have risen 
 above the cares of self and of the day, have been imagi- 
 native in thought, enterprising in action, deep and earnest 
 in feeling.... If what Mans experience teaches him is to 
 give up the imaginative, the deep and unsatisfied thought- 
 fulness, the desire to penetrate to the reason of things, 
 the hopefulness of becoming a worthier and higher crea- 
 ture; if it teaches him to be content with the idea of 
 knowledge as the registering of facts, and as what, rightlv 
 used, may benefit his material condition — he will, I think, 
 cease to improve. If he had acted on this principle from 
 the first, he would never even have begun to improve." 
 
 Two distinct charges may be brought against Ethical 
 Science, as thus defined. The first, that it must be un- 
 practical, dreamy, and Utopian. The second, that it is 
 barren and inoperative, confined to a few popular truths, 
 and incapable of real progress. 
 
 Professor Maurice has remarked, in the opening of his 
 first lecture, — " If the moral teacher adopts the distinction 
 which is sanctioned by one of the ablest and most accom- 
 plished of his class — that his business is with what ought 
 to be, that of other students with what is, can there be a 
 clearer or fuller confession that he means to leave the 
 actual world for some other world which he has imagined?" 
 And again, in the third lecture, after naming Sir J. 
 Mackintosh as the source of the quotation, he resumes, 
 " The distinction was plausible in itself, even without con- 
 sidering the authority from which it proceeded. Yet if 
 we accepted it, Ethics seemed transferred from the real 
 world in which we dwell to some other imaginary 
 world. In this case I am sure we should get no serious 
 attention for them in this busy, practical age. Dismiss- 
 ing, therefore, this opinion, without examining what might 
 
 2—2 
 
20 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 be the arguments for it, we asked whether there was no 
 other difference between this study and those with which 
 we are engaged elsewhere.... The Moralist cannot be less 
 immediately occupied with that which is, with existing 
 facts, than any physical student. His business cannot be 
 carried on in some distant Atlantis, nor can he be en- 
 grossed in the search for one." 
 
 In passages of this kind it is not always easy to know 
 whether my predecessor merely describes the probable 
 feelings and impressions of others, or adopts them for 
 his own. But it seems a cause for regret that there 
 should be no formal censure of an inference, which, if 
 actually drawn, would be one of the most inexcusable 
 follies into which this busy, practical age could possibly 
 fall. Ethical Science may be safely neglected, and in 
 such an age is sure to be neglected, if it deals, not with 
 what is, but with what ought to be ! Now the true sense 
 of the definition is plain. Neither Sir J. Mackintosh nor 
 any other moralist of common sense could ever be sup- 
 posed to mean that the business of Moral Science is to 
 quarrel with God's constitution of the universe, or to copy 
 the traditional blasphemy of Alphonso of Castile, who said 
 that he could have taught the Creator how to frame a much 
 better and more perfect world. Moral Science, it simply 
 affirms, teaches us how men ought to act, not how they 
 have acted in time past, are acting now, or may, with 
 more or less likelihood, be expected to act in time to 
 come. It deals, of course, with the actual conditions and 
 circumstances of human life. But still its proper work is 
 to teach what human actions ought to be, not what they 
 have been or are, in all the countless relations they fulfil 
 to each other, and to the great Author of their being. 
 
 Such is plainly the meaning of Sir J. Mackintosh, in the 
 
THE TRUE PLAGE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 21 
 
 words of his brief definition. They involve no confession, 
 whether clear or obscure, of a purpose to forsake realities, 
 and to speculate principally on some distant and imagi- 
 nary world. Should a busy, practical age turn away from 
 them, and justify its conduct by such a plea, our first duty, 
 as moralists, is to expose the misconception, and point out 
 the mischievous folly of the practical result to which it 
 leads. It is just in proportion as any age is really 
 practical, that the maxim has the highest claim on their 
 notice and their reverence. For it reminds these busy, 
 practical men, that the world in which their lot is cast is 
 not as it ought to be, because they themselves, the moral 
 agents by whom it is peopled, are not doing as they ought 
 to do. 
 
 There is a certain sense, it is true, in which the 
 maxim does labour to transport men from the actual to 
 an imaginary world. Only that other world is no fabled 
 Atlantis, no unknown planet, governed by laws which 
 human fancy has devised, and forming a part of some 
 unknown system. It is our own world, changed and trans- 
 figured by a moral renovation, when a pure and noble 
 ideal of thought, speech, and action, shall once have been 
 deeply and abidingly implanted in the hearts of men. 
 Its nature has been well and clearly expounded by our 
 Christian poet, — 
 
 for a world, in principle as chaste 
 As this is gross and selfish! one in which 
 Custom and prejudice shall bear no sway ; 
 That govern all things here, shouldering aside 
 The pure and modest Truth, and forcing her 
 To seek a refuge from the tongues of strife 
 In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men! 
 
 Morality is thus an intensely practical science, and 
 
2 2 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 claims the most eager and earnest attention in a practical 
 age of busy men, for this very reason, that it exhibits 
 before their eyes a lofty ideal of right conduct in all the 
 relations of life, which it is our bounden duty, every day 
 and every hour, to strive more nearly to attain. It 
 admits, in accomplished facts, or in the voice of numbers 
 and the clamours of a multitude, no excuse whatever for 
 selfishness, vice, and crime, but reminds men solemnly 
 what they ought to be, and the high standard they ought 
 to keep ever full in view. 
 
 But ethical study, if it escapes the charge of being 
 dreamy, unreal, and Utopian, is exposed to a kindred 
 reproach, that it is barren in all results, stationary and 
 unprogressive. Thus we read as follows in a work of 
 some reputation : 
 
 "Though moral excellence is to most persons more 
 attractive than intellectual, it is far less active, less pro- 
 ductive of real good. The efforts of the most active 
 philanthropy, the most disinterested kindness, are short- 
 lived, and rarely survive the generation which witnessed 
 their commencement.... There is nothing to be found in 
 the world which has undergone so little change as the 
 great dogmas of which moral systems are composed. To 
 do good to others, to love your neighbours as yourself, to 
 forgive your enemies, to restrain your passions, to honour 
 your parents, to respect those who are set over you — 
 these, and a few others, are the sole essentials of morals. 
 But they have been known for thousands of years, and 
 not one jot or tittle has been added to them by all the 
 sermons, homilies, and text-books, which moralists and 
 theologians have been able to produce." 
 
 Moral Science, if these strictures are just, consists of 
 little more than half a dozen sentences, known for thou- 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 23 
 
 sands of years, and containing maxims which very few- 
 have cared to practise. These maxims are incapable of 
 any real addition, and have also exercised a very slight 
 influence on the welfare and happiness of mankind. 
 Physical Science, it is affirmed on the other hand, consists 
 of an immense body of truth. It is cumulative and pro- 
 gressive in its nature, and has grown constantly from 
 age to age. And thus we may reasonably hope that it will 
 conduct mankind by a surer path than mere moral teach- 
 ing, and with a more effectual guidance, to some distant 
 goal of social happiness and well-being. 
 
 Now if it be meant simply to affirm that the first 
 principles of Moral Truth have been known long ago, the 
 same is clearly true of arithmetic, mechanics, and geo- 
 metry. Yet their progress has been as real, and almost as 
 conspicuous, as that of the Physical Sciences which depend 
 upon them. On the other hand, if it be affirmed that 
 simplicity and permanence, in general laws, forbid any 
 development of the various results to which they lead, the 
 facts of modern astronomy offer the paradox a decisive 
 refutation. The moral law, which enjoins the love of 
 our neighbour, is hardly more brief, and certainly not 
 much more simple, than the law of gravitation. Yet the 
 ablest analysts and geometers, for two hundred years, 
 have tasked their powers to the utmost in tracing out 
 the results of Newton's great discovery. And still they 
 are very far from having exhausted the mine of its 
 intellectual treasures. In binary stars, in asteroids and 
 planets once unknown, in comets and meteorolites, in 
 lunar disturbances, and tidal retardation, new discoveries 
 reward their efforts from age to age. And after all 
 their labour, the problem of three bodies, one of the 
 simplest that can be proposed, defies their attempts at 
 
24 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 a perfect answer, and can be solved only under favour- 
 able conditions, and by gradual and successive approxi- 
 mation. 
 
 Why, then, should Moral Axioms be less fertile than 
 the Laws of Physics in the results to which they lead? 
 The field is higher and nobler, and the capability of 
 large development, on every ground of reason, is just the 
 same. If mankind at large were half as zealous in the 
 pursuit of moral excellence, as astronomers have been, 
 since the days of Newton, in their calculation of attractive 
 forces, and their practical study of the heavens, a thousand 
 years would not suffice to exhaust the various develop- 
 ment of the great laws of social duty, or bring to a 
 close their progress in moral insight, and their successful 
 labours of thought, and practical endeavours in this higher 
 field. 
 
 Once let us see clearly the true place of Morals in 
 the grand series of the sciences, and these censures aimed 
 against them by authors who may be clever in their own 
 pursuits, but are sorely wanting in moral discernment and 
 true wisdom, will drop away like withered leaves, and 
 disappear. A science, of which the very aim and purpose 
 is to discover and enforce the true ideal of right feeling 
 and right action for every moral agent, and for each in- 
 dividual of mankind, cannot possibly be barren aud worth- 
 less, or devoid of practical power. It must be, from its 
 very nature, of high and inestimable worth. Spurious 
 counterfeits, indeed, may be not only unprofitable, but 
 most mischievous. But surely a lofty and pure ideal of 
 thought and action can never be set before the eyes 
 of men, even in the most corrupt age, and the most de- 
 graded state of society, wholly in vain. If such truths, 
 plainly taught, and such high aims, held up before their 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 25 
 
 eyes, were to be barren of all results, then assuredly, in 
 the words of Milton, — 
 
 The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble! 
 
 It is quite conceivable, however, that the mode of 
 operation of such truths, and the amount of influence 
 they exercise, may wholly elude the notice of keen-eyed 
 worldly men, or even of clever essayists and philosophers, 
 intent on physical research, or buried in the strife of 
 parties in the political world. There are tens of thou- 
 T» sands who feel the steep ascent of a hill-side, or even the 
 "^weight of some slight burden they carry in their hand. 
 But who has felt, or feels at this hour, that mighty force 
 of solar attraction, which has been unceasingly at work, 
 on the largest scale of dynamical energy, through succes- 
 sive ages ? Yet this alone has kept our earth stedfast in 
 its orbit, and hindered it from losing itself long ago, with 
 all its inhabitants, in outer darkness. 
 
 When the stern and grand old prophet stood on Horeb, 
 on the mount of the law, it was not in the earthquake and 
 the fire, the wind and the storm, that he recognized the 
 special signs of the Divine presence. It might have been 
 known and felt there also, but it was found and felt 
 chiefly in the still small voice alone. In nature those in- 
 fluences are the most penetrating and powerful which 
 escape the gaze of the superficial observer. There can be 
 no doubt, either to calm students of human history, or to 
 firm believers in Christianity, that the practical influence 
 of great moral truths, in all past ages, has been grievously 
 hindered, and often neutralized, by the moral dulness, or 
 the vicious and sinful perverseness, of the greater part of 
 mankind. They have been too often like dews alighting 
 
26 THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 on the rock, or seeds that are sown on a barren and un- 
 grateful soil. But it would be a fatal and immense error, 
 on this account, to imagine that their publication, their 
 ceaseless iteration, and earnest enforcement, whether by 
 moralists or divines, have been wholly in vain. When- 
 ever the thoughts are turned to them, the dullest con- 
 science is in some degree stirred and aroused. The coldest 
 heart is either touched with a secret pang of remorse, 
 or kindled into dim and secret longing after a higher life. 
 The weak and irresolute are awakened from the sleep of 
 useless indolence, and nerved for conflict with temptation. 
 The trance and stupor of sensuality is disturbed or 
 broken. A voice — What meanest thou, sleeper ? awake 
 and arise ! startles the truant conscience in its guilty 
 wanderings. A breath of heavenly life seems to visit and 
 breathe on the moral being, like the change which comes 
 on all the face of nature in the first days of spring. 
 Such emotions, indeed, when left to themselves, may 
 quickly expire, and the coldness become greater, the dark- 
 ness deeper than before. Some higher power is needed 
 to sustain the awakened spirit, to keep it from relapsing 
 into double apathy, and to guide its steps along the steep 
 hill-side of heavenly truth. When the brightness and 
 beauty of a high moral standard has dawned on the feeble 
 and tempted spirit, the first impulses of awakened thought 
 need to be sustained by prayer for Divine help, and the 
 hand to be stretched out eagerly, to meet the proffered 
 succour of heavenly grace. The parting words of Milton 
 in Comus will then be found to be no mere utterance of 
 a sportive fancy, but the veiled expression of the deepest 
 philosophy, and of the highest lesson of Christian faith 
 — a faith and a philosophy far more profound than 
 modern theories for manufacturing some miserable sem- 
 
THE TRUE PLACE OF MORAL SCIENCE. 2 J 
 
 blance of a conscience out of the transmuted instincts of 
 the ape or baboon : — 
 
 Mortals, who would follow me, 
 Love Virtue, she alone is free : 
 She will teach you how to climb 
 Higher than the sphery clime : 
 Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her ! 
 
LECTURE II. 
 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 Ethics is the Science of Ideal Humanity. It is no 
 mere subdivision of one secondary and limited province 
 in the wide domain of human thought. It is rather like 
 that blue firmament, which is above us and around us 
 wherever we go, and encompasses the lofty mountain 
 summits and the lowly valleys of earth on every side. 
 Its aim is to teach men, in every various field of thought 
 and action, what they ought to be, how they ought to 
 live, and what they ought to do. It claims to preside 
 over all their converse with the world of nature, and the 
 conduct of their inner life, their relations to their fellow- 
 creatures, and their duties of prayer, praise, trust and 
 worship, towards the Supreme Creator. 
 
 In width of range it must thus be coextensive with 
 all the various and countless fields of human thought, 
 speech, and action. In dignity it rises above them, and 
 surmounts them all. They set before us man as he is ; 
 Ethics, man as he ought to be. They unfold his actual 
 powers, habits, tendencies and dispositions. The science 
 of Ethics sets before him a pure and lofty ideal, of good 
 which he ought to seek, of moral beauty and perfection 
 which he should ever strive to attain. Its lessons, when 
 fully learned, show him how far he has come short of this 
 high standard, which his own conscience, when thoroughly 
 awakened, is compelled to approve. And thus it leads 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 29 
 
 him by the hand to that footstool of revealed mercy, 
 where heaven stoops to the feebleness of human virtue, 
 or even to the degradation of human vice and folly, and 
 with sovereign power raises up the lost and guilty to holy 
 blessedness without measure and without end. 
 
 But here, at the entrance of our inquiry, a great 
 stumblingblock lies in our way, and needs to be removed. 
 Have Ethics any just claim to be a genuine science ? Is 
 certainty, on moral questions, possible or attainable ? Do 
 we not rather enter here on a dark path, a thorny jungle 
 of barren strifes of words, and tedious disputations " never 
 ending, still beginning," and renewed with a wearisome 
 and fruitless pertinacity from age to age ? 
 
 The past history of mankind at large, and the known 
 course and cycles of moral speculation, tend to strengthen 
 these doubts, either of the reality, or else of the attain- 
 ableness and practical worth, of ethical science. The fact 
 is undeniable, which Locke has made so prominent in his 
 reasoning against innate ideas (Bk. I. ch. 3, § 9), that a 
 low and corrupt, sometimes a most repulsive rule of con- 
 duct and practice, has often prevailed in whole tribes 
 and families of mankind. Again, warm and earnest de- 
 bates on the foundations of morality, and its primary 
 laws, were transmitted from the clearest and keenest in- 
 tellects of Greece to those of Rome. They remained still 
 under ceaseless discussion for five centuries, until Chris- 
 tianity replaced them by other questions of a still deeper 
 kind. 
 
 At the revival of learning after the middle ages, the 
 flames of these ethical controversies, which had smouldered 
 so long, broke out anew. And now, for more than three 
 centuries, moralists and divines have rivalled the ancients 
 in the zeal with which they have espoused conflicting 
 
30 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 theories. The strife, almost as keen and eager as in the 
 days of Zeno and Epicurus, has lasted even to the pre- 
 sent hour. 
 
 How is it, again, that when Physics have advanced 
 with such giant strides, the students of morals, by the 
 confession of some of its ablest writers, should hardly 
 change their ground? Are they not still renewing the 
 same questions, which occupied youthful disputes in the 
 days of Socrates and Plato, more than two thousand 
 years ago ? 
 
 " There is no study," says Professor Grote, " more uni- 
 versal than Moral Philosophy. And yet, as a science, 
 it cannot be said to have a high reputation at present in 
 our own country. Nobody expects to learn much from what 
 professes to be Moral Philosophy, or seems to think that 
 much can come of it. This carelessness arises from a sort 
 of notion that it is very likely to be mere words, or else 
 a sort of quackery, very likely not to take hold of human 
 nature, but to rest in useless generalities . . . Others are 
 jealous of it, on account of its supposed tendency to level, 
 regulate, and square human character, destroying its 
 nativeness and variety; while those who are disposed to 
 levelling and regulation are not in general interested in 
 human philosophy of any kind." 
 
 These prejudices against the study, from the moral 
 diseases and confusions of the world, the endless disputes 
 of moralists, and the seeming absence of real progress, 
 gain double strength from causes peculiar to these times. 
 The wide spread of a school of thought, which denounces 
 Theology as an impossible science, casts its dark shadow 
 over Ethics also. It tends to degrade it into a secondary 
 branch of physiology, dependent for its very being on the 
 growth and progress of anatomical science. The advance 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 31 
 
 of Physics in all its branches, and the many inventions 
 with which it has enriched and adorned human life, bring 
 out into greater prominence the seeming absence of similar 
 progress in what claims to be a higher and nobler field 
 of thought. The restless activity of a bustling age spreads 
 around men a close and stifling atmosphere, like the fog 
 and smoke which settle down on our crowded cities. High 
 and lofty truths from the upper regions of thought seem 
 often to strive, almost in vain, to penetrate this thick 
 gloom. There can be no wonder that, in such an age, 
 ethical science should often be exposed to silent neglect 
 or open scorn. 
 
 In a Christian church and nation it might naturally 
 be supposed that the clearer light of moral truth, found 
 in the pages of a Divine message, would more than 
 compensate for other causes of neglect and decay; and 
 would secure for morals their due place in the intellectual 
 culture of the age. And this is doubtless true within 
 certain limits. The Decalogue and the Sermon on the 
 Mount, with their popular expositions, have kept before 
 the eyes of our people a standard which heathen nations 
 never attained, and have secured a very wide acceptance 
 for the simplest and plainest elements of Christian mo- 
 rality. But even this great gain, through human infirmity, 
 has not been free from some attendant loss. The higher 
 doctrines or deeper messages of Christian faith have not 
 seldom been so abused as to deaden the general interest 
 in the great lessons of Christian and revealed morality. 
 Nay, even the fact that great moral precepts have been 
 plainly revealed, and have been received in name by every 
 Christian, may turn to a hindrance of all activity of moral 
 thought. It may quench, instead of quickening, the thirst 
 for a fuller knowledge of the grounds on which those 
 
32 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 precepts are based, of their various harmonies, their count- 
 less developments, and innumerable applications. 
 
 There is still another way in which the evidence of 
 moral truth may have been clouded and obscured by its 
 connection with the cause of Christian orthodoxy. Some 
 of our ablest Divines, in maintaining revealed religion 
 against assailants, have insisted strongly on the duty, in 
 matters obscure and uncertain, of resting satisfied to act 
 on probabilities alone. Thus Butler begins his Analogy 
 with a laboured argument, to show that even a slight 
 excess of evidence, in questions highly uncertain, may 
 determine practically what course it is right to pursue. 
 But however true in the abstract it may be, such a line 
 of defence must needs exercise a depressing influence on 
 minds really athirst for truth. It is very apt to give 
 them the impression, that the being of God, the person 
 and work of Christ, the atonement, the resurrection, and 
 the life to come, are looked upon as having only a slight 
 excess of evidence, if any, over opposite falsehoods. They 
 may thus be tempted to infer that the scales of faith and 
 no-faith tremble in an almost even balance, so that confi- 
 dent faith is only just one degree less foolish than confi- 
 dent unbelief. 
 
 Such an opinion must act like a palsy on all the 
 nobler instincts of the Christian heart. It must surely 
 have been a firm, deep, and hearty conviction, far unlike 
 this timorous, hesitating, moonlight faith, by which the 
 Apostles turned the world upside down, and overcame the 
 might of the heathen empire, and martyrs poured out 
 their very life-blood in defence of the truth. 
 
 This cautious, defensive line of thought, which Butler 
 and other writers have employed in their advocacy of 
 revealed religion, has naturally affected the kindred 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 33 
 
 subject of morals. They insist strongly on the practical 
 obligation of being guided by the slightest excess of seem- 
 ing probability. The want of fuller evidence is said to 
 afford scope and opportunity for a virtuous exercise of the 
 understanding, and to dispose the mind to rest satisfied 
 with any evidence that is real. 
 
 In such remarks there is a dangerous tendency to 
 canonize doubt and uncertainty, and consecrate dimness of 
 moral vision, as if they formed a useful moral discipline 
 for Christian men. To seek and long for clear light in 
 moral inquiries has sometimes been even discountenanced 
 and condemned, as the mark of a sceptical spirit. But 
 this is a dangerous inversion of the real truth. Such a 
 desire, there can be no doubt, needs to be tempered with 
 modesty and patience. There ought to be a willingness 
 to be guided by moonlight, or even by starlight, until a 
 clearer day-break shall arise. But still "light is sweet, 
 and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." 
 The desire in itself is the healthy, inseparable instinct of 
 an earnest mind and a Christian heart. It must be owls 
 and bats of the moral world, and not the sons of light, 
 who find it easy and natural, in the high matters of 
 faith and conscience, to rest content with the dim twi- 
 light alone. 
 
 Let us now inquire whether these four difficulties, 
 which seem to beset the approaches of Moral Science, will 
 not disappear on a closer view. 
 
 First of all, the objection from the low standards of 
 moral feeling and practice in savage tribes, from the re- 
 volting usages which have sometimes prevailed, and the 
 great amount of vice and immorality even in Christian 
 lands, can have little or no real weight with thoughtful 
 men. No sensible person, certainly no Christian be- 
 B.L. 3 
 
34 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 liever, can suppose for a moment that a perfect science 
 of morals can issue forth, like Minerva from the head 
 of Jupiter, complete, full-grown, and fully armed, from 
 the mind and heart of the ignorant, the sensual, and the 
 profane. 
 
 Every science, however sure in its principles, or fertile 
 in its results, needs first of all to be learned. To learn 
 requires not only some natural capacity, but attention, 
 seriousness, and diligence. Ethics are a law of duty. 
 How can it be learned by those who are reckless of 
 duty, and care chiefly or only for animal pleasure ? They 
 are a light shining from above. How can it be seen by 
 those whose eyes, like those of Mammon, are " always down- 
 ward bent" upon the pavement below? 
 
 In the field of moral inquiry more is required of the 
 willing learner than in the walks of physical research. 
 Moral, as well as intellectual conditions, need here to be 
 fulfilled. There must be a serious desire to learn and 
 know the truth, however humbling to our pride, and how- 
 ever unwelcome to our indolence its lessons may be. Yet 
 even in Physics, and in an age mentally so active as our 
 own, how small is the number of those who obtain real 
 scientific insight, compared with those who receive with 
 implicit confidence the conclusions in vogue, from time to 
 time, among scientific men. Let some feud arise amongst 
 the known students and leaders in any science, and nearly 
 all the seeming knowledge of these multitudes, being 
 nothing more than opinions taken on trust from others, 
 would quickly disappear. 
 
 Moral Truth, to be received and held firmly, needs an 
 upward eye, and an open heart. Such is the voice 
 even of natural reason alone. But Christianity lays a 
 double stress on these necessary and indispensable con- 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 35 
 
 ditions of all moral insight. "If any one be willing to do 
 His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of 
 God." "If thine eye be single, thy whole body," i.e. thy 
 whole intellectual being, "shall be full of light." Once let us 
 read the history of the moral aberrations in the world by 
 the light of these true sayings of Scripture, and neither the 
 parricide, infanticide, and cannibalism, of heathen tribes, 
 nor the licentious vices, the drunken intemperance, which 
 defile and dishonour Christian nations, will lead us to 
 question the certain attainableness of moral truth. The 
 proverb of Solomon will supply a brief and full answer to 
 such causeles,s doubts: "Evil men understand not judg- 
 ment, but they that seek the Lord understand all things." 
 Humility, joined with earnestness and diligence, is the 
 portress which alone can unlock the gates, and open our 
 way to the temple of Moral Science. 
 
 The disputes and controversies among moralists them- 
 selves are a far more specious objection to the claim of 
 Ethics to be deemed a genuine science. How can certain 
 truth be attainable, where there seems to be neither 
 harvest-field nor vineyard of ingathering, but only a 
 battle-field of ceaseless debate ? 
 
 The triangular duel of the Academician, the Stoic, 
 and the Epicurean, has lasted for twenty-two centuries. 
 Slightly varied in form, it continues to the present hour. 
 The morality of sentiment stands opposed to the moralities 
 of reason. A morality, apart from consequences, the cate- 
 gorical imperative of pure reason, fights with a morality 
 reasoned out from consequences and results alone. How 
 shall the disciples attain certain truth, when the leaders of 
 thought, from age to age, seem to be in hopeless discord? 
 It is the saying of Professor Grote, that "when we come to 
 morals and ethics, the dust and smoke " common to other 
 
 3—2 
 
36 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 parts of philosophy " become tenfold worse." How should 
 we look for peaceful certainties amidst the confused war- 
 cries of a battle-field ? Silent inter arma leges. The 
 reproaches of unbelief against the various sects and divi- 
 sions of Christianity seem applicable, with equal force, to 
 impeach and annul the claim of Ethics to be a real 
 science. 
 
 The answer to this objection, with a little patient 
 thought, is not hard to discover. In every science there 
 are some first principles, which are the starting-point or 
 the foundation of all its other truths. These later truths 
 form the pathway to which it leads, the building reared on 
 that foundation. Now in every case these first principles, 
 because they are the first, border on mystery, and lose 
 themselves in the unknown. 
 
 " On what does the earth rest ? On the back of a huge 
 elephant. On what does the elephant rest ? On the back 
 of a huge tortoise. On what does the tortoise rest ? Ah ! 
 that, said the Indian, I cannot tell." This Eastern tale or 
 parable may be applied to the foundations of every 
 science. A well-known and able writer has laboured to 
 show, in the opening of one of his chief works, that the 
 Ultimate Keligious Ideas and the Ultimate Scientific 
 Ideas are alike "unthinkable." By what strange leger- 
 demain of thought the conclusion is reached, that Religion 
 alone is mystery and nescience, and Physical Science a 
 field of knowledge and progress, it is hard to understand. 
 The difficulty is plainly common to both subjects, the 
 natural on one side, the moral and religious on the 
 other. The solution, so far as a solution is possible here, 
 must be exactly the same for both. The striking words of 
 Hooker apply here in all their force and beauty. M The 
 goodliness of houses, the stateliness of trees, when we 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 3 J 
 
 behold them, delighteth the eye. But that founda- 
 tion, which beareth up the one, — that root, which minis- 
 tereth life and nourishment to the other, is in the 
 bosom of the earth concealed. And if at any time it be 
 needful to search them out, yet is the search more pro- 
 fitable than pleasant, both to them that undertake it, and 
 also to the lookers on." 
 
 Geometry has its half-solved or unsolved and perplex- 
 ing problems, no less than Ethical Science or Religious 
 Faith. It deals with the relations and properties of space. 
 But what is space ? Is it a substance, an accident, or a 
 relation ? Is it fixed and absolute, or relative only ? Is it 
 finite or infinite? Is Infinite Space a real something, 
 or a mere expression for the " imbecility of human 
 thought" ? Can there be empty space, or must there be 
 a plenum? Is it infinitely divisible ? Can there be a 
 surface without depth, a line without breadth, a point 
 without length, breadth, or thickness? Velocity is the 
 speed or rate of motion, or space divided by time. How 
 can this vary from moment to moment, when both the 
 space and the time, for any one rate of motion, wholly 
 vanish and disappear ? These questions, and a host of the 
 same kind, furnish large materials for controversy and 
 metaphysical debate. Had geometers forborne their la- 
 bours till a perfect and clear solution of all these 4 had been 
 found, the science would be still unborn. Pythagoras 
 would never have slain a hecatomb for his immortal dis- 
 covery, the Elements of Euclid never have been written ; 
 the tomb of Archimedes, re-discovered by Cicero with 
 natural triumph, would never have borne the trophies of 
 his skill, the cone, the cylinder, and the sphere. The later 
 triumphs of modern analysis would have been still more 
 impossible. But they laboured on, and built still on the 
 
38 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 old foundations. They did not pause to grope beneath 
 them in that region of mystery, on which all first prin- 
 ciples must repose. For there our finite reason strives in 
 vain to search out the unsearchable, or to attain that full 
 insight and perfect knowledge, which the Omniscient God, 
 the Only Wise, seems to reserve for Himself alone. 
 
 The course pursued in moral inquiries has not been 
 altogether the same. There have been repeated attempts, 
 it is true, and never wholly fruitless, to develop the con- 
 sequences of the first principles of Ethics, and unfold them 
 in systematic harmony. Dr Wheweli's Elements are one 
 example of this kind, well worthy of high praise and 
 patient study. But, in general, more pains have been taken 
 in re-examining the grounds of Ethics, or in exploring its 
 debated border lands, than in tilling the soil, and reaping 
 peaceful harvests. Or else systems have been reared on 
 a doubtful basis, maintained by some, and by others 
 stoutly denied. Thus an air of instability has often been 
 given to the whole structure. Systematic Moralists are 
 thus joined at various points in their progress, like troops 
 in full march by stragglers, by many who dispute or deny 
 some of their premises ; and who, in the words of Jeremy 
 Taylor, are " sure of the thing, even when they are by no 
 means sure of the argument." But conclusions, however 
 true and sound, when reached independently of the pre- 
 mises, or even in spite of their rejection, are wanting in 
 all the main features of exact, well denned scientific 
 truth. 
 
 But a third objection to the claim of Ethics, even 
 more serious and vital than the discords and disputes of 
 moralists, has been drawn from their supposed barren- 
 ness, and entire want of real progress. The contrast 
 between the stationary aspect of moral, and the pro- 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 39 
 
 gressive aspect of intellectual truths, is said to be 
 startling. " All the great moral systems which have exer- 
 cised much influence have been fundamentally the same. 
 All the great intellectual systems have been fundamentally 
 different." 
 
 These statements of Mr Buckle, on the face of them, 
 are excessive and untrue. The teaching of the Stoics 
 differed widely from that of the Epicureans in ancient 
 times, and both of them diverge widely from the ethics of 
 the gospel. The contrast between Hobbes and Mandeville 
 on the one side, and Cudworth and Clarke on the other, 
 is not less in modern days. On the other hand, close 
 resemblances may be found between some of the latest 
 novelties of modern scepticism, with its pantheism, fatal- 
 ism, and nescience, and the oldest forms of Eastern specu- 
 lation. Still, when all abatements are made, there is a 
 contrast not to be denied, between the rapid progress of 
 Physics in these two last centuries, and the seeming want 
 of growth in the field of ethical inquiry. What answer 
 can be given to this reproach, while claiming for Ethics 
 to be the highest and noblest part of all purely human 
 science ? 
 
 Now scientific progress may be of four different kinds. 
 These may be styled briefly, ascensive, expansive, de- 
 scensive, and diffusive. A science may climb higher to- 
 wards those simple laws which rule over all its complex 
 phenomena. It may range over a wider landscape, by 
 unfolding these laws into a rich and large variety of 
 secondary axioms. It may stoop down, to apply its dis- 
 coveries more frequently and largely to the uses of daily 
 life. It may gather around it a wider and wider circle of 
 disciples, and may thus spread its light further and further 
 in successive generations. 
 
40 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 To begin with the last. The diffusion of Ethical Truth 
 has been greater, not less, than that of modern Physics. 
 Its first maxims, indeed, are so simple as to be easily 
 mistaken for truisms, and excite the contempt of those 
 who cultivate the intellect and neglect the heart. They 
 may thus be decried as too commonplace to form the 
 basis of any science worthy of the name. So to eyes 
 accustomed only to gaslights and chandeliers, a fixed star 
 at midnight may seem a worthless thing. It has always 
 been there in the sky for ages, and its light is very small 
 and feeble. And yet this simplicity of moral maxims 
 favours their wide diffusion, and helps to secure their 
 spread throughout the family of mankind. " There is no 
 speech nor language, where their voices are not heard." 
 The great law of truth, the voice which condemns treach- 
 ery and falsehood, appeals to millions who never heard of, 
 much less received, the Copernican and Newtonian theories. 
 The law of kindness and goodwill has vibrated through 
 myriad hearts, which never dreamed of the undulations of 
 light, and to whom spectrum-analysis and polarization are 
 mysteries unheard of and unknown. The law of self- 
 sacrifice for the good of others, whether presented in word 
 only, or embodied in the life and death of martyrs, or 
 enshrined in the deepest mystery of our faith, has touched 
 and stirred the deepest waves of thought in countless 
 hearts, to whom nearly all the terms of modern science 
 are sounds without a meaning. 
 
 The moral science of the past may perhaps be ele- 
 mentary in the extreme. But even in its weakness, and 
 amidst its ceaseless struggle with prevailing vice and 
 passion, it has exerted a far deeper power over millions of 
 hearts and lives, than Physics have attained in the hour 
 of their noblest triumphs, or can ever hope to attain. 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 41 
 
 Let us next compare Physics with Ethics in their 
 descensive progress, or their practical application to the 
 uses of human life. Natural Philosophy, since the days of 
 Newton, has doubtless enriched society with a great mul- 
 titude of new inventions. It has supplied comforts to the 
 artisan and cottager, as well as multiplied luxuries and 
 triumphs of art for the homes of wealth and the palaces 
 of kings. But this kind of progress is no less real, no less 
 extensive, in Christian Morals than in Physical Science. 
 The virtuous man, the sincere and upright Christian, finds 
 occasion every day and every hour to practise anew, and 
 unfold in some fresh application, the great and simple 
 precepts of Christian morality. The liberal man will 
 continually be devising liberal things. The virtuous 
 woman "opens her lips with wisdom, and in her tongue 
 is the law of kindness." A pure fountain will hourly be 
 sending forth pleasant streams. The quiet, ceaseless ac- 
 tivity of great moral truths, once received into the under- 
 standing and heart of Christian men, may easily be over- 
 looked by busy workers on the ant-hill of science, or 
 else may be forgotten in the glare of some brilliant 
 invention or new discovery. But it is not on that 
 account the less real and important. In the words of 
 Cowper, 
 
 Stillest streams 
 Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird 
 That flutters least is longest on the wing. 
 
 I come now to that double progress of science, in as- 
 cent and in expansion, where Physics may seem at first 
 sight to have a real superiority. Even here, I think, the 
 claim will appear groundless on a closer view. 
 
 "There is nothing in the world," Mr Buckle says, 
 "which has undergone so little change as the great 
 
42 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 dogmas of which moral systems are composed." On the 
 other hand, those highest laws, which embody the clearest 
 results of modern physical discovery, the law of attraction, 
 the undulations of light, the correlation of force in various 
 forms, have been reached by a slow and painful ascent 
 in the course of ages. When once attained, they work a 
 mighty revolution in our knowledge of the material world, 
 and in our power to control its manifold changes. 
 
 Is this a proof that Ethics are lower than Physics in 
 the scale of science, and moral truths more uncertain and 
 inferior in practical value ? Far from it. What is cheap 
 and procured without labour is apt indeed to be despised. 
 But even in the natural world, the air, the sunshine and 
 light of heaven, the rains and dews that fertilize the 
 earth, are gifts freely bestowed on men, and require no 
 human labour. If the Divine wisdom has secured to all 
 men, whether by the voice of conscience, or by supernatural 
 revelation, direct access to the vital elements of moral 
 truth, and has left the answering laws or principles of 
 the outward world to reward the study of the philosopher, 
 and to be explored by human toil, ought the free gift, on 
 this account, to be despised, or consigned with contempt 
 to the list of useless and barren truisms ? 
 
 The law of gravitation is a noble triumph of human 
 sagacity and persevering labour. After long ages of pre- 
 paration, by Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler, the pro- 
 found study of Newton deciphered the handwriting of 
 that Divine law, and expounded it clearly for the admira- 
 tion of mankind. But the great law of duty — " Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself," however early or clearly 
 revealed, is higher and nobler still. We may apply to it 
 the verses of Sophocles, not in disparagement, but in 
 praise ; — 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 43 
 
 Ov yap tl vvv re KcLxOes, dXV etet irore 
 Zfi ravra, Kovdels older e£ 6'rou '<pdi>r). 
 
 What, then, is the main feature of that progress of 
 astronomy, during the two last centuries, which is the 
 chief boast of Physical Philosophy, and holds an undis- 
 puted primacy among its many signs of vitality and 
 growing power ? It is the unchanged recognition cf one 
 great law, and increasing faith in its perfect truth, amidst 
 the immense complexity, the mathematical difficulties, 
 and the ever-enlarging variety, of its results and applica- 
 tions. It forms thus a sublime example of permanence 
 amidst ceaseless progress. 
 
 Other branches of Physics have not reached this goal, 
 and their ultimate laws still elude research. There is 
 change and uncertainty in the first principles themselves. 
 The hypothesis of emission, even though sustained by 
 Newton's authority, retires and gives place to a theory 
 of undulations. This theory, again, in its first form of 
 direct, is replaced by another of transverse vibrations. 
 Caloric, the fictitious fluid of heat, disappears, and atomic 
 motion comes in its stead. The old elements, as ele- 
 ments, pass away. Phlogiston is born, and has an early 
 death. Forty or fifty new elements occupy the fore- 
 ground. But they hold their place by a precarious tenure, 
 till chemistry takes a further stride. The simplest ele- 
 ments, oxygen and hydrogen, now represent in their names 
 the ghost of a departed theory. Magnetic and electric 
 fluids come like shadows, and like shadows they depart. 
 Here science is still only on the steep and slippery moun- 
 tain side. Though it may wield its ice-axe with steady 
 skill, it mounts slowly and with labour. And not seldom 
 it slips backward, when some hasty, seductive hypotheses, 
 like a crevasse thinly covered with new-fallen snow, 
 
44 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 betrays its insecure foothold. But astronomy, since the 
 days of Newton, seems to stand firm on the mountain-top, 
 and gazes calmly on an ever-widening range of peaceful 
 scientific victories. 
 
 Now whence arises this manifest superiority over 
 other branches of physical study? The reason is plain. 
 Astronomy has attained a comprehensive simplicity in its 
 primary law, and fountain truth, such as Ethics, with the 
 aid of a Divine message, had attained long ages ago. 
 For what is the second great commandment ? It is a 
 higher law than that of universal gravitation, binding 
 together the whole universe of moral agents. And it has 
 been revealed, more dimly by natural conscience, but in 
 plain and express terms by the great and divine Author 
 of man's moral being. 
 
 The simplicity and terseness, then, of the first prin- 
 ciples of Morals, is not, as the modern historian falsely con- 
 ceives, their shame and weakness. It forms rather, as the 
 great tragedian of Athens more truly saw, their strength 
 and their glory. The roads and pathways of earth 
 change continually with the revolutions of human society. 
 Mule-tracks are replaced by turnpikes or Roman causeys, 
 and these, in course of time, by iron railroads. But in 
 the blue sky there are no such fashions of the age. The 
 courses of the stars are silent and unchangeable. 
 
 Moral truths are the stars of the intellectual world. 
 They differ from those lights, useful and yet earthly, 
 which men dig up from the mine, distil in their retorts, 
 conduct through pipes, and transmit to burners, all of 
 them the laborious products of human skill. They shine 
 by their own native light. They look down upon us calmly 
 from above, unless when fogs and mists of earth intercept 
 their brilliance. They are waymarks for the benighted, 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 45 
 
 and also dim heralds of the coming day-break. " Men may- 
 come, and men may go/' — their mines may be exhausted, 
 their pipes burst, their candles flicker and waste away, — 
 but these stars are immortal, and shine on for ever. 
 
 But has not experience at least proved an immense 
 contrast between moral maxims and the laws of Physics 
 in their power of expansion and development? The first 
 are stationary and barren. Nothing has been added to 
 them, it is said, by the sermons, homilies, and text-books 
 of a thousand moralists and divines. The others are 
 fertile, active, and progressive, and receive from year to 
 year a more full and large development. 
 
 The contrast, though greatly exaggerated in the 
 remarks to which I refer, has doubtless a partial truth. 
 The development of the great truths of Ethics, in modern 
 times, has been far less apparent to common observers 
 than the growth and progress of Physical Science. A 
 fuller knowledge of the best moralists and divines than 
 physical students, and especially positive philosophers, 
 usually care to attain, will mitigate the sharpness of the 
 alleged contrast, but cannot wholly remove it. When, how- 
 ever, we look below the surface, the seeming defect will be 
 found to have its source, partly in the moral evil which in- 
 terferes with and clogs all ethical study, but partly in the 
 superiority and higher dignity of Moral Science. 
 
 In Physics the development of theory, and its applica- 
 tion to the practical uses of life, are to a great extent 
 independent of each other. The theory of magnetism 
 might still advance to new discoveries, though timorous 
 navigators were to abandon the use of the compass, and 
 to creep, as in early times, timidly along the shore. Art 
 may grow by happy accidents, and the increase of prac- 
 tical cleverness, while the answering science remains 
 
46 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 stationary. Science may take immense strides in advance, 
 before its discoveries begin to be applied in new inven- 
 tions, and yield fruit in the service of daily life. 
 
 In Morals the case is wholly different. Its true aim, as 
 Aristotle observes, is "not that we may know what virtue 
 is, but that we may become good men; for else it would 
 be useless." It is thus essentially a practical science. It 
 teaches men what they ought to be, what they ought to 
 do. Its theory, when wholly divorced from practice, is not 
 only useless, but even mischievous. It aggravates and 
 redoubles guilt. "To him that knoweth to do good, and 
 doeth it not, to him it is sin." 
 
 Thus in Moral Science theory and practice are not 
 capable, as they are in lower sciences, of a wholly separate 
 development. Corrupt, selfish, vicious practice, must cloud 
 the eye of the soul, and impair or destroy the faculty 
 of moral discernment. Knowledge of the truth cannot 
 grow, unless the truth already known be received into the 
 heart, and applied in the life. In Physics speculation is 
 like an engine with no train attached, which can thus 
 move more freely, and advance at a swifter pace. In 
 Moral Science it is so closely linked with the whole moral 
 being, that the mind, heart, and life, the conscience, intel- 
 lect, and affections, must advance or recede, must rise or 
 fall together. In a world, then, where moral evil plainly 
 abounds, it is no wonder that Ethics, even as a science, 
 should make only a slow, intermittent, and faltering pro- 
 gress. Its standard, raised higher here and there for a 
 moment, must fall again whenever luxury and selfishness 
 abound. Progress made by the calm and patient medita- 
 tions, or the heroic virtues of a few, may be lost, to all out- 
 ward appearance, by the empty folly or fierce and angry 
 passions of the many. The fires of some scorching judg- 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 47 
 
 ment may be needed from time to time, before conscience 
 can burst the chains of reigning sensuality, shake itself 
 from the dust, escape from its cave of shadows, stand erect 
 in the freedom of a new life, and gaze with clear vision 
 and open eye on the grand realities of the spiritual world. 
 There is no reason, then, from the limited progress of 
 Ethical Science in time past, to depreciate its worth, or to 
 doubt its capacity for vast and large expansion in days 
 more favourable to its development. In the sacred words 
 of its Lord and Master, " its hour is not yet come." It 
 has now to struggle onward and upward under the burden 
 of a host of sluggish or perverse disciples, ready to turn 
 aside into seductive by-paths, or to sink lower and lower 
 in vice and folly. These load with a heavy weight, and 
 weaken with a stifling atmosphere of moral impurity, 
 even those willing learners who lend themselves to nobler 
 impulses, and strive to rise. The allegory in Comus well 
 describes, side by side with its real worth and divine 
 effects, the contempt with which it has thus come too 
 often to be regarded by some physical students : 
 
 The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, 
 But in another country, as he said, 
 Bore a bright, golden flower, but not in this soil : 
 Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain 
 Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon; 
 And yet more medicinal is it than that moly 
 Which Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. 
 
 In a happier age, assured to us by Divine promise, that 
 bright, golden flower will appear. Or rather, in the sacred 
 words of Scripture, it will become " a tree of life, yielding 
 its fruit every month," and its leaves will be for the heal- 
 ing of the nations. 
 
 I must reserve for another Lecture the fourth and last 
 hindrance to the claims of Moral Science in the doctrine 
 
48 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 of probability, and some direct enforcement of the cer- 
 tainty of moral truths. But before I close I must add a 
 few words on the vast importance of a full confidence in 
 their authority, reality, and unchangeableness, to meet and 
 overcome the special dangers of the time in which 
 we live. 
 
 Amidst the busy activity of commerce, the excitement 
 of political strife and change, the progress of physical 
 inquiry, and all the feverish, impatient movements of 
 modern thought, careful observers must observe one 
 symptom full of danger. Multitudes, in every Christian 
 land, seem to be more and more uncertain on every sub- 
 ject that rises above man's animal wants and desires, and 
 which touches on the unseen and eternal. The Christian 
 Church, the domain of Theology, is vexed with endless 
 controversy and division. Rival bodies of Christians seem 
 often more jealous of each other than zealous for common 
 truth. Political life is in danger of sinking into a mere 
 strife of parties, ranged under doubtful banners, ill de- 
 ciphered and guessed at by their own followers, — a battle 
 without generals and without discipline. One tide-wave of 
 popular impulse follows another in swift succession. All 
 old landmarks are ready to disappear beneath the shifting 
 flood. But where shall certainty be found ? Where can 
 the toil-worn spirit of man find solid footing, and attain a 
 sabbath of rest ? He can never be content to find it in 
 the properties of numbers, in squares, triangles, and poly- 
 gons alone. A secret instinct whispers to him, even when 
 most debased by folly, that his true portion must be 
 sought, and can only be found, in a higher and nobler 
 field. Tell him that morals and religious faith are a 
 Hyperborean region, buried in fog and mist and perpetual 
 darkness, where endless uncertainty reigns, and doubt, 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 49 
 
 sometimes honest, but more frequently dishonest, is the 
 highest attainment, and some slight excess of the 
 chances in its favour the only reason for a virtuous life, 
 and what results will follow ? Such a view will palsy 
 the arm of the Christian, when uplifted for noble action, 
 and strike an icy coldness to his heart. 
 
 Can we, who inherit the transmitted wealth of thought 
 of so many ages, not from heathen philosophers alone, but 
 from prophets and apostles, and the great lights of the 
 Church of Christ in all past ages, have fallen back, in 
 these last times, into disgraceful contentment with more 
 than heathen darkness ? Are we ready to accept, as the 
 teaching of advanced philosophy, a creed of pure nihilism, 
 that Theology is a dream, religion pare nescience, covered 
 thinly with a crust of decaying dogmas and idle fancies, — 
 conscience a strange function of nervous tissues, or at best 
 the acquired instinct of slaves, who crouch sullenly under 
 the lash of masters stronger or more numerous than 
 themselves ? Then indeed our boasted light can only be 
 paralleled by the state of Elymas the stricken sorcerer, 
 when there fell upon him "mist and darkness," and he 
 groped about for some one to lead him by the hand. 
 
 Such a view of Moral Science, as a field of mere un- 
 certainties, is gloomy in itself, and disheartening and 
 melancholy in the results to which it must lead. Our 
 duty as Christians, and even as students in this great 
 university, doubly adorned by the greatest lights in Phy- 
 sics and Theology, is to hold firmly a more hopeful and 
 far nobler view. 
 
 Ethics is the Science of Ideal Humanity. It deals 
 
 with that lofty standard of the good, the right, the true, 
 
 the noble, towards which all of us, from the least to the 
 
 greatest, are bound continually to aspire. And this can 
 
 B. L. 4 
 
50 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 be no land of mist and shadow. Even in times of heathen 
 darkness it had a starlight of its own. The Gentiles, 
 who had no direct revelation, were a law unto them- 
 selves. And now, in the times of the Gospel, it has a 
 light as of the daybreak, which shines more and more, in 
 honest and loving hearts, unto the perfect day. Its lowest 
 regions, indeed, must partake largely of the uncertainties 
 and complexities of that human life with which it has to 
 deal, with its manifold conditions of bodily faculties, 
 mental powers, diverse tastes, and different social relations. 
 But above and beyond these there is a higher region, 
 where it rises above the complex and ever varying ap- 
 plications of its own laws, and deals with the inward 
 motives, affections, and desires alone. And here it breathes 
 a purer air, it eats angels' food, and walks in the light 
 of heaven. The firmness of its deep foundations below is 
 only rivalled by the pureness and clearness of the light 
 that shines upon its higher summits from above. 
 
 To such an Ethical Science, so firmly rooted in essential 
 truth, and rising to such a lofty elevation above the mists 
 and clouds of sceptical uncertainty, which vex and obscure 
 the minds of busy multitudes in this present age, we may 
 apply the description of one who is supposed to have 
 practised its high lessons, and to have taught them to his 
 simple flock, the pastor of the Deserted Village: 
 
 As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
 Swells from the vale, and midway meets the storm ; 
 Though round its hreast the rolling clouds are spread, 
 Eternal sunshine settles on its head! 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 Experience and Reason* 
 
 The doctrine that in all moral subjects probability is 
 the highest attainment, is a part of the wider theory of 
 the ancient Academy, and has been held by many moral- 
 ists in later times. Aristotle remarks that "it is the duty 
 of one well instructed to seek for accuracy in every kind 
 of subject, only so far as its nature allows;" and that "it 
 is much the same error to be content with mere per- 
 suasion from a mathematician, and to require demonstra- 
 tions from the rhetorician." "Every discourse," he adds 
 further, "about things to be done must be in outline, 
 and not exact." He seems here to contrast geometry 
 with ethics, and to impute inexactness and uncertainty 
 to the latter, but to practical or applied ethics alone. 
 The later Academy held the principle more widely, that 
 in all things probability was the utmost limit of the 
 human mind, from the fallibility of the senses, and the 
 difficulties and seeming contradictions in every field of 
 thought. 
 
 Bp. Butler, again, is led to insist often on the responsi- 
 bility which results, in moral and religious subjects, from 
 even probable evidence and imperfect half-knowledge. 
 
 4—2 
 
52 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 But this line of thought is often carried so far, as at 
 least to verge on a dangerous extreme. The doubtfulness 
 of the evidence, in such cases, is sometimes assigned to 
 Divine appointment, in order to vary and enlarge the field 
 of moral discipline and probation. The strict discharge 
 of duty, he says, with less sensible evidence, does imply 
 a better character than the same diligence in the 
 discharge of it on more sensible evidence. "And men are 
 bound," he observes, "to act on what appears to them, to the 
 best of their judgment, to be for their happiness, as really 
 as on what they certainly know to be so." It is plain, 
 however, that mere guesses and probabilities, even when 
 they involve a practical duty to act upon the more likely 
 of two alternatives, can never form the materials of a 
 genuine science. 
 
 "Physical and Moral Studies have a common ground ; 
 science, and not probability, is the aim of both." Such 
 is one of the latest words of Professor Maurice in his 
 Lectures on Social Morality. The principle thus affirmed 
 is one of high importance. It might almost claim to be 
 the foundation of Morals as a Science. I do not think 
 that it is to be viewed as the consequence and result of 
 worship. It is rather the indispensable condition that 
 worship may be a reasonable service, and not sink into a 
 blind superstition. It is a conviction by no means limited 
 to those writers who lean to a mystic or transcendental 
 school of thought. The judgment of Locke in its favour 
 has double force; since it might have seemed natural for 
 him, from the general tone of his famous treatise, to rest 
 content with a lower view. He writes as follows ; — 
 
 " The ideas of quantity are not those which alone are 
 capable of demonstration and knowledge. Other, and 
 perhaps more useful parts of contemplation would afford 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 53 
 
 us certainty, if vices, passions, and domineering interests 
 did not oppose or menace the endeavour." 
 
 "The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, 
 wisdom, and goodness, whose workmanship we are, and on 
 whom we depend ; and the idea of ourselves, as under- 
 standing, rational beings, being such as are clear in us, 
 would, if duly considered, afford such foundations of our 
 duty, and rules of action, as might place Morality among 
 the sciences capable of demonstration. I doubt not but, 
 from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, 
 .as incontestable as those of Mathematics, the measures of 
 right and wrong might be made out, to any one that will 
 apply himself with the same attention and indifferency to 
 the one, as he does to the other, of these sciences." 
 
 u Two things," he continues, " have made moral ideas 
 thought incapable of demonstration, their complexness, 
 and their want of sensible representation." <l Confident 
 I am, that if men would, in the same method, and with 
 the same indifferency, search after Moral as they do after 
 Mathematical truths, they would find them have a stronger 
 connection one with another, and a more necessary con- 
 sequence, and to come nearer perfect demonstration, than 
 is commonly imagined. But much of this is not to be 
 expected, while the desire of esteem, riches, or power 
 makes men espouse the opinions in fashion, and then 
 seek for arguments either to make good their beauty, or 
 to cover their deformity. For nothing is so beautiful to 
 the eye as truth is to the mind ; nothing so deformed, and 
 irreconcilable to the understanding, as a lie." 
 
 This view of Locke, Dr Whewell, and Professor Maurice 
 is exposed, no doubt, to plausible objections, and beset 
 with seeming perplexities, but still it must commend 
 itself spontaneously to thoughtful and generous minds. 
 
54 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 " There is no reason," I have said, u in the nature of its 
 first principles, why the evidence of Morals should be 
 placed on a lower footing, or regarded as less demon- 
 strative, than that of Geometry.... It is as easy to conceive 
 the laws of space inverted as those of conscience, and to 
 grant that the properties of the circle might change, as 
 that treachery should become a virtue, and compassion a 
 crime.... The spirit of man has its own self evidence, con- 
 science its own definitions. And these are not cold and 
 silent, as in Geometry, but vocal with strong emotion, and 
 endued with a living power. Its truths are in their own 
 nature as prolific. The opening for deduction is the same. 
 Why should it not lead to certainties as sure, and conclu- 
 sions as various and manifold in this higher and nobler 
 field?" 
 
 Here, at the outset, two admissions have to be made. 
 And first, if the doctrine of consequences is the only test 
 of right and wrong, and such actions only are to be esteemed 
 morally good, as can be proved in their result to secure " the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number," Morals can 
 never be raised to the level of a genuine science. It must 
 reduce itself to a loose heap of uncertain probabilities 
 alone. A strictly utilitarian science of Morals would re- 
 quire for its construction nothing short of Omniscience. 
 To compare the moral character of two alternatives, we 
 should then have to construct two future worlds of 
 thought and action, composed of moral agents living 
 and unborn, reaching on. through the most distant ages, 
 and then to decide to which of these possible future 
 worlds the greater sum of collective happiness would 
 belong. The problem is plainly impossible in itself for 
 human knowledge. But the impossibility is multiplied 
 a hundred fold. For we should have to treat all the 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH, 55 
 
 future actions and feelings of these countless moral agents 
 as fixed terms, except so far as they depend on this one 
 alternative choice of one agent alone. Now, in reality, 
 each of them is unfixed and variable in the highest 
 degree. The attempt to found anything worthy the 
 name of science on such a basis must be a deception 
 and a failure. The seeming solution can only be gained 
 by the arbitrary selection of a few elements of an im- 
 possible problem, and omitting a thousand others, equally 
 required for a genuine solution. Loose guesses, in which 
 nearly all the data are wanting, must be confounded with 
 strict demonstration, and a power of just and true fore- 
 cast be claimed for human ignorance, which belongs to the 
 All-seeing Wisdom alone. 
 
 Again, the claim of a strictly scientific character, how- 
 ever justly made on behalf of pure Ethics, or the great 
 rules and principles of personal, social, and religious duty, 
 cannot be extended without serious error to its practical 
 applications. It may be a clear and certain truth that we 
 are bound to seek the good of our neighbour. It must 
 be a complex and doubtful inference, that we shall best 
 promote his welfare by this or that particular act or 
 mode of action. There is a time to give, and a time 
 to refrain from giving ; a time to speak, and a time to 
 keep silence. 
 
 Moral principles, however firm and sure in themselves, 
 can only be reduced to practice by joining them with the 
 lessons of a wise expediency. And this expediency cannot 
 rise higher than the level of its source, which is the 
 defective knowledge of human nature and all outward 
 circumstances, and the imperfect foresight, which belongs to 
 fallible men. This contrast between pure science, and the 
 elements of uncertainty in its applications, is conspicuous 
 
56 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 in Arithmetic and Geometry. Actual enumeration in 
 many cases, and actual measurement in all, is approxi- 
 mate only. It can be no matter for surprise, and no proof 
 of inferiority, that the same remark belongs equally to 
 the practical applications of Moral Science. 
 
 How far, then, within these needful limits, may we 
 claim for Morals a strictly scientific character, closely 
 resembling that which belongs to Arithmetic and Geo- 
 metry, and Pure Mathematical Science ? 
 
 Knowledge, in every subject, may be of two kinds. 
 It includes the actual and the necessary, what simply is, 
 and what must be. In the highest object of thought 
 alone the two conceptions meet together, and melt into 
 one. The great I AM, is at once the Supreme Reality, 
 and the necessary, self-existing Being, He who is, and 
 cannot but be. But in every other case, in all the objects 
 of sense, and the varieties of created and dependent life, 
 the two kinds of knowledge are distinct. They are the 
 separable objects of observation and reasoning. 
 
 We observe things and persons, and thus know that 
 they exist. But we are conscious, all the time, that it 
 might have been otherwise, that they might not have 
 existed, such as they are. We can conceive of others in 
 their place, wholly different. On the other hand, we 
 frame an hypothesis, and deduce from it by reasoning 
 certain results. But we may still be uncertain whether 
 the premises and their results alike have any home in the 
 world of actual realities. 
 
 The separation of these two elements is never total. 
 The progress of science consists mainly in successive 
 attempts for their more complete reunion. Phenomena 
 cannot even be registered without the aid of memory. 
 Now memory implies some thinking agent, to whom its 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 57 
 
 successive acts belong. On the other side, the formation 
 of an hypothesis also presupposes such a thinking agent, 
 and the existence of some real objects, to supply needful 
 materials for the exercise of imaginative power. 
 
 Experience and reason thus approach every subject of 
 human thought from opposite sides. One directly ob- 
 serves what is, and might have been different. The other 
 traces the necessary connections between things which 
 either are, or might possibly be. Complete, full-grown 
 science consists in their perfect reunion. Reason, as we 
 approach this limit, becomes more and more practical ; 
 till at length its hypotheses are merged and lose them- 
 selves in the real laws of the universe. In this way 
 they become the source of mastery over nature, by 
 genuine foresight of all future change. Experience, again, 
 travels upward, from transient phenomena to things and 
 persons ; and from things and persons, seen as capricious 
 and uncertain in all their actings, to the double supre- 
 macy of physical laws, and moral, intelligent design ; till 
 the real and actual loses itself in the ideal. All, transient 
 phenomena are then seen to belong to one vast scheme of 
 Providence, firmly bound together by laws, natural, moral, 
 and spiritual, some of them discovered by man, others 
 reserved in the depths of Omniscient Wisdom, but all 
 alike leading upward, and meeting at the footstool of His 
 eternal throne. 
 
 In Pure Science the elements borrowed from experi- 
 ence are of the simplest and most general kind. Hence 
 they almost disappear from view, and our attention is 
 fixed on the reasoning process alone. Here, then, proba- 
 bility has no place. The facts which need to be silently 
 assumed are so clear and simple, that they may almost be 
 called self-evident. The reasoning, drawn from few and 
 
58 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 simple premises, is demonstrative and exact. The oppo- 
 site of its conclusions is discerned, not simply as untrue, 
 but as an impossible contradiction. The sum of two odd 
 numbers cannot be an odd number. The diagonals of a 
 square cannot be unequal. Two right lines, which meet 
 in one direction, cannot meet in the other also. You 
 cannot, in showing kindness to others, show more kind- 
 ness to each of them than to all the rest. You cannot 
 inscribe a hexagon in a circle with sides greater or less 
 than the radius. But with experimental knowledge the 
 case is widely different. The evidence on which it rests 
 may vary from the plainest and fullest to the most un- 
 certain and obscure. Its materials are of unequal value. 
 They include present, direct observation, our own memo- 
 ries of the past, in some cases full and clear, in others 
 obscure and doubtful ; and also the observation and the 
 memory, clear or obscure, of other witnesses, who vary 
 most widely in veracity, caution, and intelligence. 
 
 The Applied Sciences consist either of empirical laws 
 and secondary axioms, derived immediately from observa- 
 tion and experiment ; or else in the combination of pure 
 science with experimental data, varying in their degrees 
 of accuracy and completeness. They must therefore share, 
 more or less, in the uncertainty which belongs to human 
 experience. There are doubts which may arise directly 
 from the nature of the materials, as when the astronomer 
 has to put aside faulty sets of observations. But there are 
 others which depend on their own scientific imperfection. 
 They may contain empirical laws, derived from an induc- 
 tion too fragmentary and imperfect. They may strive to 
 account for one class of known facts by inventing another 
 and larger class, which may possibly be true, but for 
 which there is no direct evidence whatever. Their axioms 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 59 
 
 may often be drawn from popular notions. They will thus 
 be vague, elastic, and variable in sense, and infect with 
 uncertainty and vagueness the whole course of reasoning. 
 The tendency of the homogeneous to become hetero- 
 geneous, and the persistency of force, when force is made 
 to mean half a dozen different things, are signal examples 
 of vague, unscientific, deceptive substitutes for the cer- 
 tainties of science. Assumptions may be separately made, 
 and reasonings founded on them, which do not agree, but 
 really exclude each other. Or finally, their complexity, 
 usually greater than in pure science, which abstracts the 
 most needful elements in its problems, may be so great, 
 as to place exact reasoning on them almost beyond the 
 reach of a merely human intelligence. 
 
 There are two main reasons which may be offered, to 
 throw doubt on the attainableness of moral truth, and to 
 reduce its evidence to the class of uncertain probabilities 
 alone. The first is drawn from its place in the scale of 
 human thought, and the second, from the freedom and 
 variety which seem implied in the actings of voluntary 
 moral agents. 
 
 When we rise in the scale of being, from Nature to 
 Man, from lifeless matter to plants, from plants to animals, 
 and amongst living animals from the lowest to the highest, 
 the complexity of the materials of science increases at 
 every stage. The first principles themselves, so far as 
 they have been discovered, are more complicated ; and 
 they shroud themselves more and more in a mysterious 
 darkness, which it is hard for the students of science to 
 explore. It might seem, then, at first sight, that Morals, 
 the highest part of Human Science, must partake above 
 all the rest in the uncertainties of observation and expe- 
 rience, and be removed the farthest from that character 
 
60 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 of certain, definite, demonstrable truth, which belongs 
 fully to the Pure Sciences alone. 
 
 The first answer to this doubt may be found in the 
 important fact that Morals are an ideal science. They 
 propose to define, not what men have done, or may do, but 
 what they ought to do. Truth is one, falsehood is mani- 
 fold. The right in morals, as the name implies, has a 
 close analogy with the straight line in geometry, in con- 
 trast with curves of single or double curvature. The pro- 
 perties of triangles and squares are far simpler and easier 
 to investigate than those of circles, ellipses, and other 
 figures of still higher orders and more complex definition. 
 
 Now this ideal character of Morals tends greatly to 
 diminish the complexity of the problems of ethical 
 science. The rules of right and wrong may be compara- 
 tively simple, when the question, how such and such 
 persons are likely to act, is difficult and uncertain in the 
 highest degree. The complex relations between the body 
 and the soul, between man and the series of lower ani- 
 mals, the varieties of personal taste and disposition, the 
 countless combinations of varying circumstances, may, in 
 the higher regions of pure Ethics, be left almost wholly 
 out of view. They belong essentially to the secondary 
 results and applications of moral principles, and to these 
 alone. There is thus a compensation, highly important, 
 to that extreme complexity which might else be inferred 
 from the place of Ethics in the scale of science. 
 
 There is also another principle to be kept in view, 
 which conspires to the same result. In the ascending 
 scale of science we rise, it is true, from the contemplation 
 of simpler and lower powers to others of a more complex 
 and higher kind. But we rise also from multiplicity 
 towards unity, from a region of seeming confusion, and 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 6 1 
 
 changes without visible purpose, to one of light, order, 
 harmony and design. Chaos, or unformed, lifeless, multi- 
 tudinous matter, comes first and lowest in the scale of 
 being, and the well-ordered Cosmos stands higher. In 
 the Cosmos itself, Man stands high above the brute crea- 
 tion ; and highest in those characters which they do not 
 share, in which he is contrasted with all the rest, and dis- 
 tinct from them, as created at first in the image of God. 
 
 All creatures, it has been said, strive to ascend, and 
 ascend in their striving. And so far as this effort really 
 exists, it includes a striving after unity, such as when a 
 regiment of soldiers, parted in the smoke and confusion of 
 a battle-field, seek to range themselves once more under 
 the standard to which they belong. Man himself is one 
 order, one genus, and one species, in contrast with the vast 
 number of orders, genera, and species, by which he is sur- 
 rounded in the animal world. But the Creator himself is 
 One, in' contrast to all the innumerable millions of man- 
 kind. 
 
 It follows naturally from this truth, that when we leave 
 the simplest conceptions or abstractions of number and 
 space, and mount higher in the scale of being, that com- 
 plexity which renders scientific treatment almost im- 
 possible, and throws us back on mere experience and 
 observation, is greatest in the middle stages of our pro- 
 gress. The mist, even in the intellectual world, often lies 
 thickest on the sides of the mountain. When we climb 
 still higher, there is a growing amplitude and grandeur in 
 the wide firmament on which we gaze, and often in the 
 earthward prospect, but we may also discern increasing 
 signs and tokens of a Divine simplicity. 
 
 Astronomy, in the extent of space with which it deals, 
 has a far wider range than Geology. And yet there is a 
 
62 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 grand simplicity and unity in the celestial motions, which 
 make them far more accessible to scientific treatment than 
 the waves of the ocean, or the solid strata of the earth. 
 And so, when we rise to the highest part of men's nature, 
 and from action to speech, from speech to thought, feeling, 
 and desire, we reach at length that highest field of Human 
 Science, where it borders on Theology. Here, even in his 
 weakness, Man rises into communion with things unseen 
 and divine. And here also tokens of a simplicity, adapted 
 for the deductions of science, and difficult to discover mid- 
 way in the long and steep ascent, meet us once more. 
 
 The great chain of thought and being seems thus to 
 be firmly anchored, and fixed in scientific certainty, at both 
 extremes. It is fastened firmly below to the truths of 
 arithmetic and geometry and mathematical reason, which 
 underlie the whole material creation. It is fastened 
 above, no less firmly, to the throne of God. But its middle 
 portion seems to hang more freely in space, and to oscillate 
 amidst the endless obscurities and uncertainties of creature 
 volition. It is only when, in the study of man, we leave 
 behind us all lower elements, and confine our thoughts 
 to the distinctive features of human reason and will, that 
 the chaos of blind, ceaseless, purposeless change begins to 
 recede from view, and the light of scientific certainty, 
 growing out of a Divine unity, slowly dawns upon us once 
 more. 
 
 It may be objected, further, to the doctrine of the 
 fixedness and certainty of Moral Science, that it is opposed 
 to the freedom of the human will, and would tend to 
 mechanize and freeze down to a cold, bare, and heartless 
 uniformity, the whole course of personal and social life. 
 Is the law of right too complex to be capable of dis- 
 covery? Then it must be practically worthless, and of 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 63 
 
 no avail. Is it capable of discovery? Is there one line 
 of action, which it prescribes, excluding every other as 
 vicious, defective, and unholy ? Must it not, then, 
 condemn all who obey it to a dull monotony of action ? 
 Will not moral agents thus become only like material 
 atoms, which obey the impulses of surrounding bodies, 
 and have no power to deviate one hair's breadth from 
 the path which inexorable laws have prescribed ? Will 
 not men thus be tempted to think of virtue as another 
 name for tameness and dull monotony, and associate 
 vice itself, breaking through these irksome rules, with the 
 ideas of variety, life, activity and freedom ? 
 
 If we accept the notion which Mr. Mill ascribes to 
 most utilitarian thinkers, that morality deals exclusively 
 with actions themselves, and not at all with the motives 
 by which they are guided, and on which they depend, it 
 will be hard indeed to rescue it from this serious indict- 
 ment. It will then prescribe in every case some precise 
 line of action, deduced from a calculation of consequences, 
 and thus reduce all virtue to the level of a precise, in- 
 elastic, and cold routine. 
 
 This view involves, however, a great misconception of 
 the real aim of Moral Science. Its true lessons seem to me 
 very different. It lays down principles and motives, which 
 ought to be the living fountains and sources whence our 
 actions are to flow. It discloses, also, limits on the right 
 hand and on the left, which they are bound not to 
 transgress, and within which they ought to move. But 
 when these conditions are fulfilled, it still leaves a wide 
 and various range for the exercise of voluntary choice and 
 human freedom. Its aim and purpose is not to annul and 
 destroy, but to redeem from a fatal bondage, and apply 
 to its noblest uses, that freedom of will and choice, on 
 
64 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 which its own existence, as a science, wholly depends. 
 Its true type and keynote is found in the earliest Divine 
 command revealed in the word of God; where, side by 
 side with one special prohibition, there was expressly 
 conceded a wide and large latitude for the free choice 
 of the human will. " Of every tree that is in the garden 
 thou mayest freely eat." 
 
 True morality is fixed and definite in its principles, 
 and in the laws and limits of action it enjoins ; but free, 
 large, and various in its application to the complex 
 economy of human life. It is not meant to extinguish, 
 but to develop to the utmost, that genuine freedom on 
 which its own authority depends. It is a law, but in 
 the truest sense a law of liberty. It is firmly rooted in 
 the soil below. But above it drinks in the free sunlight, 
 ramifies into a thousand branches and branchlets, and 
 effloresces freely amidst the play of the breeze, and under 
 the light of heaven. 
 
 Two things seem chiefly required to vindicate the 
 claim of Morals to be a genuine and certain science — 
 simplicity and clearness in its axioms and first principles, 
 and a capacity, in those axioms, for various and exact 
 development. Let us briefly examine each of these 
 points in succession. 
 
 The principle which lies at the basis of all geometry 
 is the consciousness, gained through our senses, of the 
 existence of an outward world. Moral Science rests upon 
 a truth not less simple, and not less deep in its intuitive 
 certainty — Man's inward consciousness of will, and of a 
 power of choice, dependent on the inward activity of the 
 mind and heart. It is a primary law of thought, one of 
 the intuitions of the soul. " The mind is led by its very 
 nature and constitution to perceive that there is an in- 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 65 
 
 delible distinction between good and evil, just as there 
 is between truth and falsehood." " It embodies itself in 
 the pronouns of every language, breathes in every desire 
 of the soul, and lives both in the memories of the 
 past, and the hopes of the future." It is the grand 
 fundamental keynote, ever sounding anew in the daily 
 voices of life, and the whole history of the world. 
 
 Pure Ethics deal immediately with the tempers, 
 desires, and affections of men, viewed in the light of 
 this one simple truth, that they are beings endowed with 
 choice, reason, and will. Applied Ethics deal with the 
 outward results of these same feelings, tempers, and 
 desires, when carried out in speech and action, and ramified 
 into union with all the physical conditions of man's 
 complex being, and all the immense and manifold 
 varieties of his social life. Thus Applied Ethics belong to 
 mankind alone. But Pure Ethics must extend to every 
 conceivable race of moral agents, or beings endowed with 
 choice and reason, however various their other characters 
 may be. It includes angels, as well as men. And if our 
 fancy chooses to people distant planets with rational ani- 
 mals, widely differing from ourselves in shape, sense, and 
 physical structure, the great laws of moral obligation must 
 include these also. They do not depend on the specialities 
 of man's animal nature, but on that gift of a reasonable 
 will, which marks him out as higher than the whole brute 
 creation. 
 
 Thus Pure Ethics, in the subject with which it deals, 
 has a simplicity which rivals the science of number and 
 of space. It deals with moral units alone. It leaves out 
 of sight the secondary features of human nature. It 
 looks on man simply as a moral agent, gifted with the 
 power of voluntary choice, and thus capable of right and 
 
 B. L. 5 
 
66 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 wrong desires, of good and evil actions. This view of his 
 nature gives birth at once, by an instinct invincible in 
 itself, and present even when most obscured, to a deep 
 sense of moral obligation. Such a being is not under the 
 constraint of a mere physical law, which he must obey. 
 Yet he cannot be altogether lawless. His conscience owns 
 a higher law, which he may break, but ought to obey. 
 
 The relations of such moral agents, the monads or atoms 
 of the moral world, to the sentient beings around them, 
 are in their own nature simple and uniform, like those of 
 the points which form the triangle or the square. To the 
 awakened conscience they are fixed, clear, and certain, like 
 the truths of geometry. Only they are far higher in 
 kind. Their voice speaks not only to the understanding, 
 but to the heart. And hence there is no reason, from the 
 nature of its first principles, why Pure Ethics should not 
 form a clear and definite science. 
 
 But a science cannot be formed of a few axioms alone, 
 unless these are capable of a real expansion and develop- 
 ment. Are moral axioms, then, sterile in their own 
 nature ? Are they ice-bound as in an arctic frost, where 
 life and growth can find no place ? Such is the view, as 
 we have seen, in the " History of Civilization." Nothing, 
 its author tells us, has undergone so little change as moral 
 axioms. They have been known for thousands of years, 
 and moralists and divines, with all their labour, have not 
 added one jot or tittle to their amount. Morality admits 
 of no discoveries. It is cursed with perfect immobility 
 and barrenness, while Physics pursue a triumphant course 
 of never-ending discovery. 
 
 Now so far as a contrast may have arisen from the 
 vicious habits of men, or their moral dulness or perverseness, 
 it can have no weight to bar the claim of Ethics to be 
 
6 7 
 
 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 a genuine science. It must be shown the difference de- 
 pends on the very nature of moral truths, and not on the 
 backwardness and reluctance of men to receive them 
 simply, to search them out honestly, and to explore pa- 
 tiently the results to which they lead. Is the contrast 
 then real, or is its seat to be found in a diseased judgment 
 alone ? 
 
 Let us consider the great maxim of the Divine law — 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Its simplicity is 
 extreme. But the law of gravitation is also very simple. 
 " Every part of matter attracts every other with a force in- 
 versely as the square of their distance." And still, simple 
 as it appears, the most profound geometers and analysts, 
 for more than two hundred years, have tasked their powers 
 to the utmost in tracing out and exploring its necessary 
 consequences. The results of their labours are embodied 
 in treatises and essays without end, in lunar, planetary, and 
 cometary theories, in theories of tidal motion and the figure 
 of the earth, in essays on variation of constants, nutation, 
 precession, in the discovery of fresh terms of lunar and 
 planetary correction, of growing minuteness, in the orbits, 
 periods, and inclination of double stars, and in the tri- 
 umphant addition of two new planets to the solar system. 
 And they are still far from having reached the limit of 
 possible discovery, or exhausting all its treasures of hidden 
 truth. 
 
 Why should the Divine rule of duty, revealed in the 
 Law and the Gospel, and confirmed by the voice of natural 
 conscience, be less fertile and various in the deductions that 
 flow from it, and the results to which it leads ? It resolves 
 itself at once into the double enquiry — Who is my neigh- 
 bour? — How ought I to love myself? This latter enquiry 
 divides itself next into the twofold obligation, to seek 
 
 5-2 
 
68 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 health of body, and health of mind, in intellectual and 
 moral well-being. 
 
 The pursuit of bodily health includes many plain 
 lessons of duty, in temperance, soberness, and chastity, 
 active exertion and reasonable rest. But it also includes 
 others less plain and self-evident, the duty of growing 
 attention to sanitary laws, the due and proper use of medi- 
 cal skill and science, and watchfulness against the occasions, 
 inlets, and provocatives, of dangerous disease. The duty 
 has also many varieties and special forms, according to 
 differences of occupation, and varieties of temperament, 
 habit, and personal constitution. Thus it tends to absorb 
 and incorporate all the successive discoveries of medical 
 learning or practical experience. It condemns, as immoral 
 and guilty, the careless ignorance, the blind improvidence 
 and headstrong folly, which are like a partial suicide, and 
 whereby so many not only endanger or shorten their own 
 lives, but expose their fellows to the ravages of infectious 
 and fatal disease. 
 
 The duty of self-love, when applied to the mind itself, 
 opens a still wider field of thought. It parts at once into 
 two main divisions. It includes the pursuit of all truth 
 and light in the understanding, and of all pure and noble 
 affections in the heart. 
 
 The pursuit of truth, again, is threefold, in an ascend- 
 ing climax of worthy objects of desire. It includes natural, 
 moral, and spiritual truth. And each of these is vast and 
 large in dimension and variety. The truths to be sought 
 after, and eagerly prized and retained, become larger, 
 nobler, and loftier, the higher we rise in the scale of being. 
 Like the chambers in the temple of Ezekiel " there is an 
 enlarging, and a winding still upward." The knowledge 
 of nature is a wide field. The knowledge of Man, the free 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 69 
 
 and moral agent, the lord of nature, is wider and nobler. 
 And highest and noblest of all must be the knowledge of 
 Man's Creator, of God the Only Wise, the Eternal Foun- 
 tain of all wisdom, goodness, and love. 
 
 That province of self-love, which prescribes the 
 culture of the affections, and the control of the desires, 
 is no less wide and various. For these affections admit 
 of being doubly classified, by their internal characters, 
 and their outward objects. When each of these is once 
 submitted to a distinct inquiry, the field of thought it 
 discloses will grow wider and wider continually. It 
 includes faith, hope, love, patience, meekness, zeal, cou- 
 rage, prudence, humility, nobleness of mind and heart. It 
 views each and all of these, in their reference to all the 
 varied relationships of human life, parent and child, 
 husband and wife, brother and sister, master and servant, 
 neighbour and friend, subject and sovereign. Everywhere, 
 as we advance, new vistas of light and beauty will open 
 before us. The beautiful words of Milton on the benefits 
 and pleasures of education will apply still more fully to 
 these researches of moral science : — " We will conduct you 
 to a hill- side, laborious indeed in the first ascent ; but 
 afterwards so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, 
 and melodious sound on every side, that the harp of 
 Orpheus was not more charming." And we may sum up 
 the scope and compass of its teaching in the more sacred 
 words of the Apostolic command : " Whatsoever things are 
 true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
 just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever things are of good report — if there be any 
 virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things !" 
 
 But the other question — Who is my neighbour? 
 implied in the same command, opens another wide and 
 
70 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 ample field for ethical study and meditation. For it 
 leads us to reflect on the definition of moral neighbour- 
 ship, and on all those special circumstances of opportu- 
 tunity, kindred, sex, age, and social position, which 
 modify the general duty imposed by the great law itself, 
 and diversify it into a thousand forms. It extends, in its 
 widest range, to the whole human race, and even to 
 beings of other races, whenever their existence has been 
 clearly revealed. But it does not extend to all alike, 
 however remote. The element of nearness or opportu- 
 nity enters into the very essence of the command. In 
 the law of gravitation we find one simple rule of insen- 
 sible graduation. But here, in the great law of moral 
 duty, there is a gradation of a far more complicated 
 and various kind. All the relationships of human life, 
 the laws and usages of social order, the conditions of 
 time and place, and the sacred ordinances and bonds of 
 religion, supply various elements, by which the love of 
 our neighbour is more and more diversified ; till it is 
 enriched with colouring as various and beautiful as the 
 hues and shades of light in the bow of heaven. 
 
 But it may be objected, finally, that even if moral 
 truth in its own nature, from the definite character of 
 its first axioms, and their capability of expansion, 
 admits of scientific treatment, its immense complexity 
 forbids the hope of any real success, when we pass beyond 
 a few precepts, which sound like truisms, and attempt to 
 unfold it in forms available for the conduct of life. 
 What is most wanted in the present stage of Moral 
 Philosophy, according to Professor Grote, is "not defi- 
 niteness of system, but largeness of view." " Of course," 
 he adds, " this renunciation of system, so far as it goes, 
 lowers moral philosophy from its scientific rank, and 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. J I 
 
 alters it from the character of a single science to 
 that of a group of sciences, whose relation to each other 
 is not easy to determine." These remarks have doubtless 
 an element of truth. They would be wholly true, if 
 narrowness and definiteness were the same thing. He 
 who looks, in clear sunlight, on a field shut in by high 
 walls, has only a narrow view, but what he sees he sees 
 clearly. He who tries to look on a wide, unbounded land- 
 scape, when a thick mist and fog is on every side, has a 
 view, not exactly narrow, but indefinite and confused. 
 The vision, practically, may be more confined and partial 
 than before. The true system, in every field of science, 
 is that which discerns clearly the relation of central 
 truths, and traces them out towards the distant horizon ; 
 but also recognizes how dimly the more remote are seen, 
 and how much lies beyond the horizon, and remains un- 
 known. 
 
 In Moral Science, as in mathematical and physical 
 study, it is thus of high importance to distinguish between 
 principles and their application, the firmness and certainty 
 of primary and fundamental laws, and the complex 
 elements of man's earthly life, which diffract their pure 
 light, and force on us the recollection of the weakness of 
 our faculties, and our need of dependence on a higher 
 wisdom than our own. The contrast in the words I have 
 quoted needs thus to receive an important modification. 
 In Pure Ethics our first and main want is clearness and 
 definiteness of system. In Applied Ethics the great want 
 is largeness and comprehensiveness of view. By the first 
 we claim the privilege of moral eyesight. We escape 
 from fog and mist and darkness, and gaze on a landscape, 
 where we see, and know that we see, moral truths, 
 sure and certain, which cannot deceive. By the second, 
 
72 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 we throw down the walls which would confine our view 
 within too narrow limits, and see vistas of moral conse- 
 quences, reaching out far and wide in all directions, 
 which we see dimly and imperfectly at the best, and which 
 lose themselves in the unknown. 
 
 It is common, in these days, to speak with exultation 
 of the progress of science, and to boast of the many dis- 
 coveries of physical students, by which we have far out- 
 stripped the attainments of every previous age. And no 
 doubt this progress, in itself, deserves notice and admira- 
 tion. But if Physics only advance, while Moral Science 
 recedes and goes backward, our loss, we should find out 
 ere long, would immensely exceed our gain. There can 
 be scarcely, I conceive, a sadder spectacle, than an age of 
 great intellectual activity, and of moral torpor and sloth ; 
 when men trace out busily and eagerly the laws of matter, 
 and at the same time grow deaf to the claims of con- 
 science, and blind to the supreme authority of the great 
 law of love. It was the honour of Socrates to recall the 
 thoughts of the Athenian youth from doubtful speculations 
 in physics to questions affecting the moral duties of daily 
 life. May not the like lesson still be needful, even in our 
 Christian nation, and when Physics has risen out of 
 doubtful and loose speculation into the real and progressive 
 discovery of natural laws ? Men may be eager to trace 
 with prism and spectroscope the most subtle phenomena 
 of light, and still be content to remain in moral dark- 
 ness. They may search out, with line and dredge, the 
 depths of ocean, and care little about the moral depths of 
 sin and want in the human heart. They may infer, from 
 subtle combinations of theory and experiment, the lessen- 
 ing distance of Sirius, and wholly neglect the revealed 
 doctrine, echoed by natural conscience, of the sure ap- 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 7$ 
 
 proach of death, resurrection, and a life to come. They 
 may be confident of the latest guess of theory on the fossil 
 ' shells or moving glaciers of some distant, unknown age ; 
 and be satisfied to remain in doubt whether there is a God 
 who made them, a law of right which they have broken, 
 a moral pathway of hope and recovery open before them, 
 and the solemn reality of a coming judgment. But to be 
 positive about truths of the lowest class, and contentedly 
 ignorant of the highest, to preach up science in the mere 
 heel of the body corporate of truth, and canonize ignorance 
 and endless doubt on those subjects which are the head and 
 crown of the whole, can be no mark or sign of intellectual 
 progress. It is rather the proof of growing anomaly and 
 dangerous disease. He who formed the spirit of man with- 
 in him has never made him capable of finding certainty 
 in numbers and triangles, circles and polygons, and 
 wholly incapable of knowing himself, and his own duties, 
 hopes, and prospects, as a being made in the image of 
 God, far nobler and higher than the fowls of the air 
 or the beasts of the field. The maxim, yvco0c aeavrov, 
 which heathens recognized as a Divine gift, is far too pre- 
 cious to be thrown to the moles and bats by Christian 
 men, under the vain fancy that sure truth is to be found 
 in Physics alone. It may be hard and difficult to climb 
 the hill-side, and we may sometimes, amidst the mists that 
 surround us, be ready to abandon even the effort to rise. 
 But to those who persevere the promise is sure, that 
 clearer and clearer light will dawn around them. The 
 scales of sense will pass from their eyes, and the mists 
 will slowly disappear. That grand, comprehensive Moral 
 Law, which it is the object of Ethics to discover and un- 
 fold, the true ideal of human thought and action, is no 
 child of night and darkness. It finds its proper home 
 
74 THE CERTAINTY OF MORAL TRUTH. 
 
 In regions bright of calm and serene air, 
 Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, 
 Which men call earth, — 
 
 those regions which are the native home of all truth and 
 certainty, of light and love. 
 
 To this law, far more than those of physics, the noble 
 words of Hooker will apply. "Her seat is the bosom 
 of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things 
 in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as 
 feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from 
 her power. Both angels and men, and creatures of what 
 condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, 
 yet all with uniform consent, admire her as the mother 
 of their peace and joy." 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION OF MORAL 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 The definition of a Moral Agent must form the starting- 
 point of all Ethical Science. Like the definitions of a 
 point, a line, and a surface in Geometry, we must expect 
 that it will touch on what is mysterious and hard to ex- 
 plain. But this mystery will form no adequate hindrance 
 to a true and just conception, capable of preparing the 
 way for a large superstructure of moral truth. 
 
 A Moral Agent is a person or individual, endued with 
 the powers of action, feeling or sensation, and spontaneous 
 choice ; self-conscious, or capable of reflecting on his own 
 actions, feelings, and volitions; and knowing good and 
 evil, or apprehending a standard of good and right on 
 one side, of wrong and evil on the other, with which his 
 own thoughts, feelings, and actions, and those of others, 
 may be seen to agree or disagree. It seems thus to imply 
 the concurrence of three main elements. The first con- 
 stitutes a sentient, the second a reflective or self-conscious 
 agent, the third and last, a being conscious of a law of 
 duty which he is bound to obey. 
 
 First of all, a Moral Agent is a person or individual 
 being. The negative theory, which turns men and animals 
 into mere bundles of sensations, tied together one knows 
 
76 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 not how, is fatal to the very existence of Moral Science. 
 But it is fatal to Physical Science also. Until we rise 
 from separate phenomena to the conception of things and 
 persons, by which these are caused, and to which they 
 belong, we stick fast in deep mire where there is no 
 standing, no foothold for the human reason. Let us adopt, 
 for instance, the definition of life which a recent specu- 
 lator has proposed, that " it is a definite combination of 
 heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, 
 in correspondence with external coexistences and se- 
 quences." Here we have an attempted portraiture of 
 life, where there is no recognition of any living thing 
 or person whatever. We have a series of changes, and 
 nothing more. It is the play of Hamlet, where no Hamlet is 
 to be found. But our first conception of life is always that 
 there is some one being which lives. No series of changes, 
 whether simultaneous or successive, whether homogeneous 
 or heterogeneous, can possibly give the conception of life, 
 unless they first suggest the perception of some living thing 
 or person, insect, bird, beast, or man, to which they belong. 
 
 Again, every living thing suggests and includes the 
 ideas of action, sensation, and spontaneous choice. What- 
 ever is alive acts, and it also feels. But we also ascribe to 
 it some kind of choice or spontaneity. The elements 
 which enter into this choice may vary widely. But even 
 in the lowest forms of life we conceive action to depend 
 in some way on the feeling or sensation of the living 
 thing, and not to be decided directly and simply by ex- 
 ternal impulses alone. 
 
 A living thing, however, may act and feel, and in a 
 certain sense may choose how to act, and still be incapable 
 of reflecting and reasoning upon its own actions. With the 
 power of reflection or self-consciousness we pass from the 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. J J 
 
 animal to the human or rational stage. The very name, 
 Conscience, from conscire, implies a duality, in which the 
 thinking being is its own object of thought, lives, in some 
 sort, side by side with itself, and not only has such and 
 such powers, but is conscious of them, and can reflect upon 
 them. This power of self-knowledge, in which the soul 
 can see itself, compare its own feelings, judge of its own 
 actions and thoughts, and through its own self-conscious- 
 ness come to recognize the existence of conscience in 
 others, seems to distinguish man from the lower animals, 
 and is essential to the conception of a Moral Agent. 
 
 The word, I, in contrast to all splendid and pretentious 
 polysyllables, has thus been truly placed by Prof. Maurice 
 as a kind of sentinel at the gate of Moral Science. It is 
 a key, he justly remarks, " to that mystery in words, which 
 makes them interpreters of the life of individuals, of nations, 
 of ages ; the discoverers of that which we have in common, 
 the witnesses of that in each man which he cannot impart, 
 which his fellows may guess at, but which they will never 
 know." 
 
 But a Moral Agent is, further, one who knows good 
 and evil ; who can not only reflect on his own actions and 
 feelings, as his own, but compare them with an appre- 
 hended ideal of the good and right, and discern, in his 
 own case, and in that of other moral agents, their agree- 
 ment or their disagreement. Thus self-consciousness rises 
 into a conscience of right and wrong, of good and evil. 
 The comparison will be latent and potential when there 
 has been no inward experience, or outward observation, of 
 evil and wrong. It becomes explicit and clear, whenever 
 evil has been witnessed or experienced, as in the sacred 
 narrative of the first human trangression, 
 
 Knowledge of good, dear bought by knowing ill. 
 
78 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 Every sentient, self-conscious being, capable of recog- 
 nizing an ideal standard of right and wrong, of good and 
 evil, and of being guided in thought, feeling, and action, 
 by motives drawn from the perception of such a standard, 
 is a Moral Agent. He is not only an I, but an I who says 
 to himself, This I ought, and this I ought not to be, to 
 feel, and to do. 
 
 The sense of Moral obligation, in every such agent, 
 depends on the union or concurrence of two elements. 
 The first is the power of voluntary choice itself. The 
 second is the capacity of perceiving, in various forms of 
 feeling and action, the moral contrast of good and evil, of 
 duty and transgression, of right and wrong, and of being 
 influenced by motives of this higher kind. 
 
 The vexed question of the freedom of the human will 
 enters thus into the very foundations of Moral Science. 
 But it is important to observe the practical limit of the 
 connection between them. We do not need fully to re- 
 solve a deep problem, which loses itself in mystery, how 
 far the will is determined by motives, or itself fixes the 
 weight and decides the relative order of the motives 
 themselves. All we need to know is that there is an 
 extreme on either side, which is fatal to moral obliga- 
 tion. Within these limits, our defective knowledge of the 
 nature and actings of the will does not hinder the sense 
 of duty from remaining firm and strong. 
 
 Once let us suppose that choice is an illusion, that 
 human acts are decided, like the motion of a planet in its 
 orbit, simply by the concurrence and resulting effect of 
 many external impulses and physical sensations, and then 
 the sense of responsibility, or of a moral character in our 
 thoughts and actions, disappears. Men would then have 
 no more claim to be moral agents than the falling apple 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 79 
 
 or the flashing meteor, than stocks or stones, or the waves 
 of the sea. 
 
 On the other hand, suppose the will to act without 
 any motive or reason whatever, by a blind caprice, an im- 
 pulse without an aim, and responsibility would cease on 
 the other side. Such an agent would be like the fic- 
 titious atoms of Epicurus, that turn aside a little from the 
 right line, without any reason why they deviate one way 
 more than another. But he must cease thereby to be a 
 reasonable being. He becomes an embodied chance, a 
 capricious and senseless atom. For surely to act even 
 on a mistaken motive, and from an insufficient reason, 
 is at least one step higher than to act with no motive or 
 reason whatever. 
 
 Between these two extremes, of a volition purely 
 capricious on one side, and of mechanical, physical com- 
 pulsion on the other, there is a wide interval where 
 moral responsibility has its natural home. Man is not so 
 free as to be able to dispense with motives altogether. 
 Yet he is bound by no such chain of fatal necessity as that 
 motives are mere mechanical forces, and can decide his 
 course irrespective of his own inward state, and the cha- 
 racter of his whole moral being. How far motives, by 
 their habitual prevalence, form the character, and how 
 far pre-existing character for good or evil varies and 
 affects the force of the motives, are deep and hard pro- 
 blems of 'the human heart. In these we may be able to 
 see but a little way. But the human conscience, whenever 
 it is not bent on vain self-excuse, and drugged by some 
 fatal opiate, decides at once that these limits do obtain 
 in the actual constitution of human nature. Man is still 
 free enough to be responsible, however grievously, in 
 many cases, he may be " holden with the cords of his sins." 
 
8o THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 And still he is not free enough to despise with safety the 
 double warnings of experience and of revelation on the 
 power of vicious habits, and the bondage to which they 
 swiftly lead. Those words of the prophet clearly express 
 a solemn and weighty truth, — " Can the Ethiopian change 
 his skin, or the leopard his spots ? Then may ye also do 
 good, who are accustomed to do evil." 
 
 The power of reasonable and spontaneous choice within 
 these two limits is the ground and basis of moral obliga- 
 tion. The two ideas, like the convex and concave in one 
 and the same curve, are correlative and inseparable. The 
 truth has its inward aspect, towards the agent himself, 
 and his own self-conscious power ; and its outward aspect, 
 towards the law of right above him, and the whole 
 moral universe. Every where and in all things Law must 
 reign, and chance is only a shadow. If Man, then, by 
 reason of his higher powers, escapes from the control of a 
 physical necessity, and from laws he cannot help obeying, 
 he must come thereby within the range of a higher law of 
 right and duty, which speaks to him in nobler accents 
 with the voice of a sovereign, and which he knows and 
 feels that he ought to obey. 
 
 The close connection of these two ideas, power of 
 reasonable choice, and moral obligation, is doubly con- 
 firmed by the cases they include, and by those which lie 
 just beyond their limit. Wherever that power is recog- 
 nized, however wide the other differences, we own the clear 
 existence of moral duty. Thus the existence of angels is 
 revealed to us in Scripture. Of their special powers, their 
 gifts and modes of intelligence, very little, and almost 
 nothing is known. Still they are clearly set before us as 
 intelligent beings, endued with the powers of reason and 
 choice. Therefore, while ignorant of nearly all beside, we 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 8 1 
 
 recognize at once that they are moral agents, bound by 
 the great laws of moral duty. 
 
 Again, philosophers have pleased themselves with in- 
 venting conjectural races for other planets, endowed with 
 reason, but in other respects supposed to differ widely 
 from mankind. But these inhabitants of Yenus, these 
 Jovians or Saturnians, are no sooner invested in our 
 thoughts with will, choice, and reason, than we feel that 
 the laws of duty must also apply to them. The same is 
 true of every Eastern tale of magicfal change of form or 
 supposed transmigration. The magic which changes the 
 shape alone leaves the sense of moral being unaltered. 
 But the moment we suppose reasonable choice to be gone, 
 and blind instinct alone to rule in its stead, the whole 
 moral nature has disappeared. 
 
 The same connection reveals itself, no less clearly, 
 when we dwell on those cases which seem to border on 
 moral obligation, without fully attaining it. Three such 
 cases may be specified — children, lunatics, and those do- 
 mestic or nobler animals which attain some striking re- 
 semblance to the virtues and vices of mankind. 
 
 The question is often perplexing, at what stage of its 
 life a child first begins to be responsible. So long as the 
 infant merely continues and multiplies its experiments on 
 the outward world, we do not ascribe to it a moral cha- 
 racter. As soon as it gives signs of self-reflection, we feel 
 that in that childish bosom a nobler life has begun to be 
 revealed. And whenever this reflection seems to involve 
 a power of comparing its acts. and feelings with a law of 
 duty, it becomes plain that the exercise of a moral nature 
 has begun. We place it then at once in the higher 
 category of moral and responsible agents. Those infants 
 only escape from the claims of this law, which, in the words 
 
 B. L. 6 
 
82 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 of Scripture, have no "knowledge of good and evil," no 
 sense of a standard of right above and beyond themselves. 
 The case of lunatics seems, at first sight, more per- 
 plexing. There is here not only frequent embarrassment, 
 but a strong tendency to mutual divergence between 
 doctors on one side and lawyers and divines on the 
 other. The former are prone rather to extend, the 
 latter to contract, the range of exemption from moral 
 responsibility through the partial failure of reason. The 
 perplexity arises, I think, in no small measure, from con- 
 founding pure Ethics with that mixed, composite morality, 
 which is involved in human jurisprudence. The lunatic, 
 in general, does not cease to be capable of strong con- 
 victions about moral right and wrong. But, owing to 
 some mental illusion, the connection which may be as- 
 sumed in other men between certain actions and the 
 answering motives is distorted and deranged. His in- 
 ward feelings do not lead to their natural and healthy 
 results. His outward acts, when tried by customary rules, 
 do not indicate, with any clearness and accuracy, his 
 inward motives. Thus he does not cease, for a moment, 
 to be inwardly responsible in the sight of God. But the 
 common rules by which human law infers crime and 
 guilt in the heart from the outward actions fail to apply, 
 and if they are enforced, would lead to serious injustice 
 by their application. The method of solution which 
 replaces all forms of punishment by simple detention 
 seems to be rather an idle and clumsy way of cutting 
 the knot, which it would need much care and pains to 
 untie. In avoiding wrong to the individual, it runs the 
 risk of serious danger to society, and of a general relaxa- 
 tion of human law ; for all vice and crime is highly 
 unreasonable, and therefore, in one sense, a presumption 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 83 
 
 of partial madness. Lunatics have been known to attempt 
 or threaten murder on the ground of their own expected 
 impunity through mental disease. Surely the true policy, 
 in cases where criminal acts, by the verdict of a jury, are 
 connected with strong suspicion or proof of partial de- 
 rangement, would be to refer the decision on the partial 
 or entire remission of the legal punishment to a mixed 
 tribunal of lawyers and eminent physicians, selected 
 and permanently appointed as a court of special juris- 
 prudence. 
 
 Such cases, however complex and difficult in practice, 
 only bring out the principle itself into clearer relief. So 
 far as involuntary illusion divorces the outward act from 
 the motive it would otherwise infer, the action ceases to 
 wear the moral character which the law, in other cases, 
 justly assigns to it. But, so far as the mind can choose 
 and reason, though partly under false impressions, it con- 
 tinues to be morally responsible. The difference is that 
 more exact care and closer inquiry is needful, to decide 
 on the moral elements of the inward feelings and inten- 
 tions, as deduced from the outward acts. An oar does not 
 cease to be an oar, because, when dipped in water, it 
 seems to be broken. Allowance needs only to be made 
 for the diffracting power of the medium in which part of 
 it is seen. The lunatic continues responsible for his own 
 motives, feelings, desires and intentions. He is not re- 
 sponsible for his outward acts, so far as they are turned 
 aside 2 by involuntary illusion, from the course to which 
 these inward desires and feelings would lead in a healthier 
 mind. 
 
 Another subject, which tends to obscure the doctrine 
 of moral responsibility, is the close approach, at least, to 
 the characteristics of moral vice or virtue, which some 
 
 6—2 
 
84 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 animals appear to attain. How natural it is to apply 
 moral epithets of praise or blame, to the dog faithful to 
 his master even to death, to the vicious, unmanageable 
 horse, the generous war-steed, the cunning serpent, and 
 those various domestic favourites, which seem to come 
 within the shadow of human influence, and assume, in 
 some measure, the features of a higher nature than 
 their own ! 
 
 On the strength of this evident fact an attempt has 
 been made to found the theory that all moral feelings and 
 emotions are only animal instincts, slightly transformed. 
 The view falls in with the doctrine of successive evolution 
 of species, so popular at this hour with a large number of 
 physical students, and espoused by them almost with the 
 zeal of a new religion. The moral sense is said to follow 
 "firstly, from the enduring and always present nature of 
 the social instincts, in which respect man agrees with the 
 lower animals ; and secondly, from his mental faculties 
 being highly active, and his impressions of past events 
 extremely vivid, in which respects he differs from the 
 lower animals. Owing to this condition of mind, man 
 cannot avoid looking backward, and comparing the im- 
 pressions of past events and actions. He also continually 
 looks forward. Hence, after some temporary desire or 
 passion has mastered his social instincts, he will reflect 
 and compare the weakened impression of such past im- 
 pulses with the ever present social instinct ; and feel that 
 sense of dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied instincts leave 
 behind them. Consequently, he resolves to act differently 
 for the future, and this is Conscience. A pointer dog, if 
 able to reflect on his past conduct, would say to himself, 
 as indeed we say of him, I ought to have pointed to that 
 hare, and not have yielded to the passing temptation of 
 hunting it." 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 85 
 
 A pointer dog, " if able to reflect on his past conduct/' 
 would be a highly intelligent, almost human being. And, 
 if able further to say to itself, " I ought to have resisted 
 that passing temptation, which turned me aside from the 
 law of my duty, and to have pointed at that hare, instead 
 of hunting it," such a dog would plainly be a conscientious 
 being, a moral agent. But the " if" and the " I ought " in 
 this hypothesis are instances of what has been wittily 
 called " the Saltatory Principle," which some have called 
 in to supplement the doctrine of slow development. It 
 leaps over an immense gulf at a single bound. Compared 
 with the Man described just before, who merely seeks to 
 gratify a suppressed and reviving instinct for social plea- 
 sures, the dog would rank far higher in the moral scale. 
 The attempt to bridge over the interval between man and 
 the brute is ingeniously made by a double process of 
 change. Man is degraded into a slave of the stronger 
 instinct, and his blind obedience to it is dignified with the 
 name of conscience. The animal is promoted into a self- 
 reflecting, conscientious moral agent ; who considers his 
 own ways, and says to himself, like a moralist or divine, 
 " This is a temptation to which I ought not to yield. This, 
 and not that, is what I ought to do." 
 
 The only force in an argument doubly fallacious con- 
 sists in the undoubted fact that the conduct of animals, in 
 some cases, does spontaneously suggest the use of moral 
 epithets. It is natural, almost unavoidable, to apply to 
 them words of praise or blame. How can this be ex- 
 plained, if the power of a reasonable choice and moral 
 responsibility are inseparably linked together ? 
 
 Now in what cases does the conduct of animals rise 
 into what we feel, at least, a very close resemblance of moral 
 virtue? In every case, I think, it is when some lower 
 
86 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 instinct, either of indolence or animal pleasure, yields to 
 the higher motive, obedience to a superior will. The 
 faithful dog finds its chief delight in pleasing its master. 
 It listens to his voice. It watches his eye. It follows 
 promptly, and with evident delight, the slightest indica- 
 tion of his will. Endowed with senses and powers of 
 delicate scent or swift motion, superior to his master's, 
 he still takes pleasure in lending them to the service of 
 one in whom he feels instinctively the presence of a 
 nature higher than his own. It becomes to him a second 
 nature, strengthened by a thousand acts, that his master 
 should command and he should obey. 
 
 All moral action consists in obedience to a law of duty, 
 which appeals to the highest part of man's nature, even at 
 the sacrifice of lower instincts and momentary pleasures. 
 When united to religious faith, it consists in the recogni- 
 tion of a higher, uncreated Will, supremely good, and in 
 obeying that Will, so far as its lessons are known and 
 understood, at whatever price of self-denial, pain, or 
 suffering. 
 
 It is plain, then, that all these instances of devoted 
 attachment, on the part of animals, to which epithets of 
 moral praise are commonly applied, bear the very closest 
 analogy to virtuous actions in moral, intelligent beings. 
 The dog, which looks up fondly to its master, and obeys 
 every sign of his master's wish, follows within the limits 
 of its own power the very same law which constitutes 
 piety and moral goodness in human beings. He practically 
 apprehends and follows his own highest good. His actions 
 are not only naturally good, they border closely on moral 
 goodness. They bear to it the closest analogy and the 
 nearest resemblance. Let us only, by a tacit illusion, add 
 to them the idea of something higher than instinct, of a 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 87 
 
 free and reasonable choice, and they become instances of 
 moral goodness in one of its purest and noblest forms. 
 
 How, then, are such acts of animal nature to be distin- 
 guished from actions properly of a moral kind? By the 
 want of power in the animal to rise beyond the visible 
 standard, the will of its master, and to compare its actions 
 with a standard of absolute right still higher. A criminal, 
 we may suppose, the owner of a faithful dog, to escape 
 from the police, stirs it up to attack them, and it is killed 
 in defending its master from the hands of justice. We 
 admire and praise its fidelity, to which its life is 
 sacrificed. We impute the blame and condemnation to the 
 vicious owner alone. To obey the human will is the dog's 
 highest law, and it seems to us incapable of climbing 
 higher. When an instinct so noble is perverted and 
 abused through the sin and folly of man, we have simply a 
 proof that man, when he deserts the true standard of his 
 being, is not only made subject to vanity in his own 
 person, but also drags down with him the lower creation 
 in his grievous fall. 
 
 But there seems to be a further truth involved in facts 
 of this kind, and which is needed to complete the explana- 
 tion. There is a singular class of facts in the science of 
 harmony, called the doctrine of forced vibrations. Notes 
 or strings of a particular pitch or length, when their sound 
 is powerful, tend to hinder and quench those vibrations of 
 other strings which are in discord with them, and awaken 
 others which are either in unison, or bear to them the 
 relation of some fundamental chord. 
 
 There seems to be a similar law in ceaseless operation 
 in the world of thought and intelligence, when lower 
 natures are brought under the daily and hourly influence 
 of some being of a higher kind. They are attracted by a 
 
88 ' THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 kind of magnetic influence. Their own instincts are more 
 or less suspended, and replaced by others of a higher sort, 
 the echoes and reflections of that higher nature which 
 dominates over them. They are thus magnetized into the 
 semblance of a higher life than is properly their own. 
 And thus domesticated animals, in proportion as the 
 society of man has its full influence over them, seem to 
 rise into a kind of border land between mere instinct and 
 moral intelligence. They are raised by a foreign power 
 above themselves. A process of elevation is at work, 
 which tends to conceal the interval between instinct and 
 reason, unmoral and moral life, because the lower instinct 
 is guided, controlled, and in a manner subdued and re- 
 placed, by a power derived from man's higher and nobler 
 being. The strange marvel, recorded once alone in 
 Scripture, and even there a stumblingblock and jest to 
 the careless and profane, would seem thus like one extreme 
 instance of a general law in ceaseless operation. It may 
 be taken for an outward visible sign of a sacramental 
 privilege of moral elevation, gained by lower creatures 
 through the daily consecration of their best powers to the 
 service of man. When the prophet was perverse and 
 faithless, the ass which had served him faithfully so long, 
 rose for a moment to a share in its master's abused and 
 forfeited privilege. It saw what the man whose eyes had 
 been opened could not see. The dumb ass, speaking with 
 human voice, forbad the madness of the prophet. 
 
 The faithful animal, which cleaves to its master with a 
 fond affection, and sacrifices its own instincts in obeying 
 his will, attains thereby the highest type of its own being, 
 and a close resemblance to moral goodness in beings of a 
 higher type than its own. And when this analogy is 
 confirmed and deepened by such daily and hourly inter- 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 89 
 
 course that the higher, intelligent will seems to mould 
 and almost animate the lower, the resemblance is closer 
 still, and seems almost like a direct participation. But 
 these border cases only confirm the truth of the principle, 
 that a power of reason and free choice, and this alone, 
 is joined with the sense of moral obligation. They prove 
 that instinct in its highest and noblest forms is, in the 
 words of Coleridge, like "the shadow of approaching 
 humanity, the sun rising from behind, in the kindling 
 dawn and morning of creation." 
 
 But the same principle, the primary and fundamental 
 law or conception of Moral Science, precludes at once, and 
 wholly sets aside three counterfeit theories of conscience, 
 the physiological, the instinctive, and the tyrannical. Let 
 us examine these briefly in succession. 
 
 The Physiological Hypothesis in Morals consists mainly 
 in the union of two elements. The first is the process of 
 medical research, by which the consequences of all mental 
 emotions are traced in their effects on muscular and 
 nervous tissues, and on the state of the bodily frame. The 
 second is a vague, ill- defined theory of the perpetual 
 equality of dynamical force, under forms ever varying. 
 All moral emotions, it is thus inferred, are only the results 
 of some strange concentration and transmutation of solar 
 force in the nervous structure of the human frame. 
 
 Nov/ it is plain at once that since we ascribe moral 
 responsibility to angels and other possible unknown races, 
 of a physiology wholly different from our own, or bodiles s 
 spirits, and deny it to animals, however nearly allied 
 to us in structure, so long as we exclude from our 
 conception the gift of reason, the hypothesis must be 
 an entire delusion. It excludes from the definition of a 
 moral agent what is alone essential, and includes wha t 
 
90 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 is accidental and superfluous. Things may actually 
 concur, and that in the whole range of our limited 
 experience, and still we may feel clearly that there is 
 no essential connection between them. Certain changes 
 in the nervous tissues, let us grant for a moment, accom- 
 pany the moral emotions of love or hatred, sympathy or 
 envy, hope or fear. How can this prove that the physical 
 change is the cause of the emotion, and not its effect? 
 How can it prove that the connection is not wholly 
 arbitrary, and capable of being entirely different for 
 other races, or for men themselves in the life to come ? 
 Thus, for instance, we cannot think of a circle, or reason 
 upon it, without some sensible image. There may be 
 many to whom it always suggests the thought, by associa- 
 tion, either of a plate in a dinner service, or of the sun in 
 the sky. But if some skilful manufacturer should try 
 to persuade us, that the properties of the circle depend 
 on a knowledge of the earths that are used in making 
 porcelain, or the spectroscopic observer, that they rest 
 on a chemical analysis of the red protuberances of the sun, 
 then, in spite of all their manufacturing skill or scientific 
 attainments, we should justly laugh to scorn so prodigious 
 a folly. And it is and must be a folly no less extreme, 
 when the attempt is made to resolve into some complex 
 medical fact about the waste and change of nervous 
 tissues, those grand fountain truths of moral good and 
 evil, which encompass, guide and sustain the whole 
 universe — those laws of eternal goodness and righteous- 
 ness, which are the deep foundations of the throne 
 of God. 
 
 But the mere instinctive theory of morals is equally 
 set aside by the same test. A man has lost favour with 
 his fellows by some selfish or cruel act, the result of self- 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 91 
 
 will or animal impulse. He is thus disliked, and his 
 social instinct is troubled and dissatisfied. To get rid 
 of this pain, "he resolves to act differently for the 
 future, and this is conscience !" 
 
 Conscience, according to this new and strange definition, 
 is nothing more than an instinctive effort to escape from 
 the secret pain of an unsatisfied desire. It would seem 
 to follow that every one is conscientious, in proportion 
 to his eager attempt to procure the unbridled and cease- 
 less indulgence of every lust. The great author of evil, 
 according to Milton, must have had his conscience in 
 vigorous exercise, when he set out on his expedition to 
 deceive and destroy. 
 
 " Gabriel, thou hadst in heaven the esteem of wise, 
 And such I held thee; but this question asked 
 Puts me in doubt. Lives there who loves his pain? 
 Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell, 
 Though thither doomed? Thou wouldst thyself, no doubt, 
 And boldly venture to whatever place 
 Farthest from pain, where thou might'st hope to change 
 Torment with ease, and soonest recompense 
 Dole with delight, which in this place I sought." 
 
 And if a strong social instinct is needful to complete 
 the definition of conscience, this too is satisfied in the 
 description of his eager longing for closest "league and 
 amity" with Adam and Eve and their offspring, which the 
 arch-fiend has professed just before in his famous soliloquy. 
 Our great poet hardly could have suspected that a philo- 
 sophy would arise, which would find all the needful 
 elements for the genesis and birth of conscience in his 
 own masterly portraiture of the Prince of darkness, and 
 the vehement workings of self-tormenting and consummate 
 evil. Avoidance and flight from evil, and craving for 
 
92 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 companionship at whatever cost, are seen there united in 
 full perfection. 
 
 Near akin to this theory of conscience, as generated by 
 the effort to escape from an unsatisfied instinct, is the 
 tyrannical theory, which sees in it submission to the will 
 of the stronger, and a mere result from the habitual dread 
 of human punishment. On this view it is an artificial 
 product and creation of the penalties which lawgivers 
 have imposed. Thus a strong association is produced 
 between certain lines of conduct, and the dangerous and 
 painful consequences to which, under the actual constitu- 
 tion of society, they naturally lead. 
 
 Now it is doubtless true that by means of human 
 laws and their penalties we rise most easily to a vivid 
 perception of moral right and wrong. We are told, on 
 the highest authority, that " by law is the knowledge of 
 sin." It seems, however, no less plain that human laws do 
 not create the conscience of right and wrong, but only 
 awaken it. Men come very soon to distinguish between 
 actual laws, and a higher standard of right, by which laws 
 themselves need to be measured. It is felt that legisla- 
 tion, in some cases, may be unwise and mischievous, and 
 that punishments, though in agreement with the letter of 
 human laws, may be unjust. How can water rise above 
 its source? How can the conscience of man, if it be merely 
 a product of the fear of punishment, ever pass sentence 
 on those very laws by which punishment is enjoined? 
 The authority which such laws carry with them depends 
 plainly on two causes. Either what they enjoin is seen 
 to be right in itself, and what they forbid to be wrong ; or 
 else the relation between those who command, and others 
 to whom the command is given, is felt to involve the duty 
 of obedience, whenever the command is not in its own 
 
'OF MORAL SCIENCE. 93 
 
 nature morally evil. In both cases alike we are com- 
 pelled to recognize a source of obligation higher than the 
 mere will of the lawgiver. In one case it reminds us that 
 such things were duties, and right to be done, even before 
 the human command was given. In the other, the higher 
 law enjoins obedience, within certain limits, to the known 
 will and command of a lawful superior. But without some 
 faculty of moral discernment, some standard of right 
 deeper and higher than human laws, the laws themselves 
 must be wholly powerless. Nothing would be left of them, 
 but the power of the stronger to inflict suffering on the 
 weaker, whenever there is not abject submission to their 
 will ; and the exposure of the weak to be crushed by the 
 strong, till their turn may come to cast off a hateful yoke, 
 and become oppressors in their turn. 
 
 Once let these theories of morals be condensed into 
 their simplest form, and stripped of those accessories of 
 ingenious thought, which disguise their true features, and 
 they will be spontaneously rejected as wholly incapable of 
 explaining the real experience and deepest convictions of 
 the human heart. When a man has committed a frightful 
 murder, his whole nervous system undergoes a strange and 
 painful disturbance, and this is conscience ! When he has 
 forfeited the esteem of his fellows by selfishness and vice, 
 his social instincts are unsatisfied. He resolves to gratify 
 them in future, and this is conscience ! The slave crouches 
 with fear before a human slave-driver, and shrinks from 
 the lash he sees uplifted, and ready to fall, and this again 
 is conscience ! Yes, they are conscience in the same sense 
 that the monkey, the chimpanzee or the gorilla is a reason- 
 able man. There are some strong features of bodily or 
 anatomical resemblance, but the human heart and mind 
 are wholly wanting. Such a conscience is no true con- 
 
94 THE PRIMARY CONCEPTION 
 
 science, but a poor and wretched substitute where the 
 reality is wholly absent. A murderer may experience 
 strange horrors. The "horrid, horrid dream" of the 
 scene of violence may beset him in his waking hours. 
 He may have the strongest desire, and the firmest reso- 
 lution, to disguise his crime, that he may still enjoy the 
 pleasures of social intercourse. He may be full of secret 
 terror, lest his course should be detected, and the sentence 
 of the law alight upon him. And all the time conscience 
 may be asleep. He may remain a hardened and cruel 
 ruffian, ready, if only he can reckon on impunity, to 
 repeat the worst of crimes. 
 
 True Conscience is a higher and nobler thing. Its 
 ground and root is the conscious possession of a reasonable 
 will, an inward power of choice, dependent on no mere 
 external influence, but on the mind's own conviction of 
 what is fit and right to be done. Its upward growth is 
 towards the light, sometimes dimly seen, as in mist, some- 
 times as in brighter daylight, of some noble and lofty ideal 
 of human conduct, some bow of heaven, in which the pure 
 light of a perfect love diffracts and varies itself into a 
 thousand forms of loveliness and beauty. It lifts the eye 
 of the soul towards those eternal hills, whence its help for 
 moral conflict and victory must come. The physical 
 elements of man's bodily frame do not and cannot enter 
 into its definition. It belongs to the reasonable mind and 
 will, whether unembodied or disembodied, to angels and 
 to men, to men living as we now live, of unclothed by the 
 stroke of death, or clothed upon with nobler bodies in the 
 resurrection. It deals with voluntary actions in their 
 threefold character, the source from which they flow, 
 the limits within which they move, and the issues to 
 which they tend. But moral tendencies cannot even 
 
OF MORAL SCIENCE. 95 
 
 exist, when moral characters and distinctions, in the will 
 which is the fount of action, are wholly denied. The 
 tree must first be good, that its fruit may be good also. 
 There must be some character of moral goodness in the 
 motives, tempers, and feelings of the heart themselves, 
 before they can have any tendency, in their actings, to 
 produce good even in distant ages, and throughout the 
 whole extent of the moral universe. 
 
 The law of gravitation, in the natural world, is 
 wonderful in the consequences it involves, and the results 
 to which it leads. We live, it tells us, surrounded by 
 mysteries without number. All creation is bound by it 
 into one great system of being. Every leaf that withers 
 and falls in the forest, affects, though insensibly, the 
 motion of every planet in that great system. The dew- 
 drop, alighting on the grass, has its speed increased by 
 every gem buried in the Indian waves, and every wave 
 that dashes on the beach of a thousand distant isles. 
 Links of secret influence emanate from our own bodies, 
 from every bird and insect in the skies of summer, and 
 range onward, till they lose themselves in the depths of 
 space. There is nothing solitary in the wide creation. 
 There is no single mote or atom, in earth or air or sea, but 
 is linked fast, by relations science has in part revealed, 
 and which in part are still hidden, to the whole system 
 of created and material things. 
 
 Now conscience discloses to us a law of union in the 
 moral w r orld, as wide and far reaching as the law of 
 universal attraction, but of a nobler and higher kind. It 
 is a law, not of physical compulsion, but of moral duty. 
 It pronounces, not what will be done, but what every 
 moral agent ought to be and to do. Revealed to us more 
 dimly by natural conscience, it stands out in still clearer 
 
96 primary conception of moral science. 
 
 light in the word of God. But clearly or dimly taught, 
 the message is the same. The sacred voice may be 
 repeated, but the vision is one. That law is the great and 
 simple law of love. It includes love to God, and love to 
 men and all the creatures of God. It ranges through 
 every rank and order of sentient beings, as the objects it 
 includes within its care, though moral, intelligent, reason- 
 able creatures are the only subjects to which it belongs. 
 It stoops to protect the insect from the lawless cruelty of 
 the child, and rises to claim the allegiance of angels and 
 archangels before the throne in heaven. It seems at first, 
 like the pure sunlight, to be so simple that nothing can 
 be learned from it, and thus it may be in danger of being 
 mistaken, by the rash and careless, for an empty truism. 
 But when it stoops down to earthly things, and passes 
 through the clouded atmosphere of this lower world, it 
 discloses an infinite variety of rights, duties, and obliga- 
 tions, which belong to men in their relations to each 
 other, to the unseen world beyond the grave, and to the 
 great Author of their being. And when it has ranged 
 through the wide universe, and stooped down to awaken 
 high and pure desires in hearts that have been deluded 
 and darkened by vice and folly, recalling them to the 
 upward pathway of light once more, it returns to pre- 
 sent its gathered wealth of all holy desires, all good 
 counsels, and all just works, as a freewill offering at the 
 footstool of that glorious Fountain of goodness, perfect in 
 all moral beauty and holiness, from whom they proceed, 
 and to whom they tend as their proper home. For " God 
 is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and 
 God in him. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for 
 God is love !" 
 
LECTUEE V. 
 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 All science, as Lord Bacon truly remarks, has three main 
 subjects, Nature, Man, and God. There are thus three 
 main divisions of human knowledge, Natural Philosophy, 
 Humanity and Theology. Natural Philosophy, again, is 
 simple, because in material things, and mere vegetable 
 and animal life, there is no standard of right and duty, 
 distinct from their actual state. Theology is also simple, 
 because in the great First Cause, what is and must be, 
 what is and what ought to be, through the perfection of 
 the Divine Nature, are one and the same. The true 
 conception of a God includes the highest conceivable 
 perfection. But our knowledge of Man and Moral Agents 
 is twofold. Side by side with the lesson of their actual 
 state, derived from experience, we are compelled to 
 recognize an ideal standard, a law of duty and perfection, 
 which they may or may not attain. And hence there is a 
 twofold Science of Humanity, the Actual and the Ideal. 
 Ethics is the science of Ideal Humanity. It is thus co- 
 extensive with the wide range of experimental or practical 
 human science, and presides over it, as it presides over 
 Physics, being the lawful superior and mistress of both. 
 And it borders on Theology, of which, rightly understood, 
 B.L, 7 
 
98 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 it is neither the rival, the child, nor the slave, but the 
 spouse and ally, subordinate in holy and loving union. 
 For in reality it is only through some awakening of 
 natural conscience that men can rise to the discernment 
 of spiritual truth. 
 
 Ethics, again, have science and certain truth, not mere 
 guesswork and probability, for their aim. Such a view is 
 confirmed, not only by the judgment of Locke and my 
 two most eminent predecessors, but by the nature of the 
 subject, and the analogies of geometrical science and 
 physical research. It must be possible, with humble and 
 patient thought, to rise here above the mists and fogs of 
 endless doubt into a higher region of clear sunlight and 
 eternal truth. The definitions are simple, on which the 
 whole superstructure depends. The whole temple of 
 moral truth may be said to rest on these two pillars — 
 a power of reason, will, and spontaneous choice in each 
 moral agent, and a perceived standard of right and wrong, 
 binding on such a free moral agent, as his true ideal of 
 thought, feeling, and action, by its own inherent and 
 supreme authority. That standard, reduced to its simplest 
 form, and summed up in one word, is the great law of 
 universal love, or the first and second great command- 
 ments of the Law and the Gospel, bound together in 
 essential, indissoluble, and perfect union. 
 
 Such a view of the nature of Moral Science may seem 
 perhaps, at the first glance, to reduce it within the narrow 
 limit of a few barren and almost self-evident truisms. 
 But such an inference would be a fatal misconception. 
 The star we see at midnight may appear, to the careless 
 observer, to be only an insignificant speck of light. But 
 the seeming minuteness results from its distance alone. 
 The sun is a million times larger than the earth on which 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 99 
 
 we live. Silius, from modern photometry, lias been 
 inferred to be sixty or a hundred times intrinsically 
 brighter than the sun. It may thus, for aught we can 
 tell, be the centre of a material system, vaster and larger 
 than our own. So also the simplest truths of science, like 
 the properties of the triangle or the circle, or the law of 
 gravitation, are the most fertile, when we strive to trace 
 out the consequences involved in them, and the results to 
 which they lead. And as soon as we endeavour to map 
 out the fields of Moral Science, and to form the outlines of 
 its geography, it will become plain how immense is the 
 range of thought which has here to be traversed. A rich 
 and large variety of moral precepts, lessons and doctrines 
 of high importance, will then be seen to unfold themselves 
 from its fundamental truths. 
 
 Moral Science admits of being classified in three 
 different ways. The first of these depends on the various 
 objects or persons whom it includes ; the second on the 
 faculties and powers of the mind, which have to be brought 
 under the control of moral obligations ; and the third on 
 those moral capacities, which are shown, by the joint 
 evidence of experience and revelation, to belong to the 
 whole universe of moral agents. 
 
 I. First of all, Moral Science may be viewed with 
 reference to the objects or persons whom it includes within 
 its range. It is thus parted at once into three main 
 divisions, Personal, Social, and Divine. The third and 
 last of these answers to .the first great commandment of 
 the law. The second, which is like the first, includes the 
 two others. Theology, based on a supernatural message 
 from heaven, descends naturally from the love of God, as 
 the primal duty, to the love of man. But when we 
 view Morals as a human science, the natural order is a 
 
 7—2 
 
IOO THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 climax, in which we begin with ourselves, and then travel 
 outward and mount upward. Self-love, the love of our 
 neighbour, or of mankind at large, and the love of God, 
 are thus the three main divisions or kingdoms of Moral 
 Science, as denned by the objects of duty which it includes, 
 and the persons to whom it extends. 
 
 Self-love is the first of these three main laws of moral 
 duty. Its just expansion and development open a very 
 wide field of thought. If we are*- not to love ourselves at 
 all, the command, Thou shalt love ? thy neighbour as thyself, 
 is robbed of all sense and meaning. It would then consti- 
 tute a virtual prohibition of every kind of social affection. 
 Personal and social morality are thus inseparably linked 
 by the Divine law. They rest on the same foundation, 
 and must stand and fall together. 
 
 This branch of Ethics has been exposed to a double 
 perversion from opposite, sides. One class of writers 
 would exalt it beyond its due limits, so as to constitute the 
 whole of Moral Science. Others fall into an opposite 
 extreme, and would exclude it altogether. 
 
 All the selfish theories of Ethics come under the first 
 description, or the school of Epicurus, Hobbes, Mande- 
 ville, and the lower class of utilitarians, who have not 
 changed their wild olive by grafting it on the more fruit- 
 ful stock of Christian benevolence. To the opposite pole 
 belong some mystics of the middle ages, the school of 
 Kant, and some few intuitive moralists of modern times. 
 According to the first class of writers, all morality is only 
 a wise expediency, a prudent, foreseeing regard to our 
 own happiness and enjoyment, and a wise calculation of 
 the means of securing it in the fullest measure. Accord- 
 ing to the other, virtue must be pursued simply for its own 
 sake. Any respect to our own benefit in upright or 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. IOI 
 
 virtuous conduct degrades it from its proper character of 
 obedience to an absolute law of right, and thus poisons 
 duty at its fountain-head. 
 
 The pathway of true wisdom lies between these two 
 opposite extremes. Those benevolent affections, which 
 alone satisfy the wide and large claim of the great law of 
 duty, are more than mere self-love, covered with a thin 
 disguise. The mind, when in a right and healthy state, 
 goes forth directly towards its object. It seeks the good 
 of the loved one for his or her own sake, and does not 
 pause first to make a secret calculation that their benefit 
 will redound in probable or certain gain to ourselves. 
 The benevolent affections, as Dugald Stewart has well 
 observed, * prompt us to particular objects without any 
 reference to our own enjoyment." There is no doubt that 
 actions of outward beneficence may often proceed in their 
 secret source from self-love alone. But then in this 
 case they fail to satisfy the first conditions' of social 
 morality. 
 
 To the same effect Cicero remarks on the doctrine of 
 Epicurus {Be Fin. II. 24), "Where can there be a place 
 for friendship, or who can be a friend to any one, whom 
 he does not love 'ipsum propter ipsum/ himself for his 
 own sake ? What is it to love, but to wish any one to 
 be enriched with the greatest benefits, even though there 
 should be no return from those benefits to him who 
 desires them ? But it benefits me, you may say, to be of 
 that disposition. Nay, perhaps, to seem to have it. For 
 you cannot be such, unless you are such. And how can 
 you be such, unless that love itself has possession of you ? 
 And this comes to pass, not by introducing the con- 
 ception of its usefulness, but it is born of itself, and 
 springs up of its own accord. But you say, I follow 
 
102 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 utility. Thy friendship then will last, so long as some 
 gain shall follow it, and if utility makes a friendship, the 
 same will unmake and destroy it." 
 
 The reasoning of Kant, on the other hand, would exclude 
 from morality all pursuit of personal happiness. Our duty, 
 he affirms, is to seek our own perfection, and our neigh- 
 bour's happiness, but neither our own happiness nor our 
 neighbour's perfection. This is a strange paradox in a 
 writer so subtle and profound. It replaces the Divine 
 command by another, which seems its exact converse — 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour, but not as thyself." 
 What every one inevitably wills, he says, cannot fall 
 under the notion of duty, so that it is an intellectual 
 contradiction to say that a man is obliged to advance 
 his own happiness with all his might. But surely an 
 instinctive craving for momentary pleasure differs very 
 widely from a deliberate, rational pursuit of our own 
 highest welfare. The first may sometimes be synonymous 
 with open vice, and oftener still with careless and guilty 
 folly. But the second, though it may have a further and 
 wider range, must evidently include the aim at moral 
 perfection. And thus it must ever form one essential 
 element of true morality, as approved by the enlightened 
 conscience, and directly enjoined in the Word of God. 
 
 Social Morality, the second main division of Ethics, has 
 its own difficult problems. What is it to love our neigh- 
 bour as ourselves 1 Does it mean that we ought to love 
 him with exactly the same kind of love ? In this case, if 
 our self-love be excessive, diseased, and impure, we should 
 have to extend the range of this disease and corruption, so 
 as to infect the whole range of our social action. If we 
 love ourselves inordinately and unreasonably, without 
 candour or equity, the evil would only be aggravated 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 1 03 
 
 by exercising an affection of the same kind, even if that 
 were possible, to all around us. Or does the precept mean 
 that we are to love them exactly in the same degree? 
 This is hardly possible in itself. And it is an idea, which 
 seems further excluded by the word, " neighbour." For 
 this naturally implies that nearness enters into, and forms 
 one element in determining, the moral obligation. The 
 true meaning of the command seems rather to be, that the 
 thought of self or not-self is excluded in estimating the 
 relative claims of duty, and that the obligation rests on 
 nearness, neighbourhood, and opportunity alone. We are 
 nearer to ourselves than to others, and have thus fuller 
 opportunities to seek our own good, and to act for it, than 
 for theirs. But beyond this contrast, which cannot be set 
 aside, and is of great practical moment, the rule prescribes 
 that the question, whether the good be theirs or ours, shall 
 not disturb the impartial actings of a wise benevolence, 
 which will thus be found in perfect harmony with a 
 temperate and healthy self-love. 
 
 The third and highest branch of Ethics, Divine Moral- 
 ity, or Moral Theology, gives rise to deep questions of 
 another kind. If love consists in a genuine desire for the 
 happiness and well-being of others, or of ourselves, how 
 can it apply to One, of whom not every Christian only, but 
 every intelligent Theist, must believe that He is purely 
 and perfectly blessed ? But the answer to this difficulty is 
 not hard to find. Love may assume three different forms 
 or aspects, according to the diverse state and character of 
 the object beloved. It may rest on those who are in 
 want, pain, suffering, and moral degradation. In their 
 case it assumes the form of pity and compassion, of desire 
 for their moral recovery, or their relief from suffering. 
 Again, it may have respect unto those who are upright, 
 
104 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 sinless and happy, but whose happiness is limited, and 
 their moral excellency still capable of a large increase. 
 In their case love must assume the form of simple 
 benevolence, of desire for the increase of their happiness, 
 and their growth and progress in all things that are 
 good and worthy of praise. But, lastly, love may have for 
 its object the glorious Creator and Preserver of the 
 universe, the Infinitely and Supremely Good, who is 
 blessed for ever. And here it must pass into a higher 
 and nobler form. It becomes a delighted and adoring 
 complacency in the contemplation of His infinite good- 
 ness. Divine Love is the exact reverse of selfish mur- 
 muring, or of sinful envy. It implies a deep gladness of 
 heart, that He who is perfectly good and holy should be 
 removed far above the reach of pain and evil, and that 
 He should be blessed with perfect and inconceivable 
 blessedness for evermore. 
 
 II. Moral Science may be distinguished and arranged, 
 in the second place, by a reference to those faculties or 
 powers of the mind and will, which are seen to coexist in 
 every moral agent. The threefold character of the science 
 meets us here in another form. Goodness, wisdom and 
 power, all infinite, meet in our conception of the Divine 
 Being. Being, knowledge or intelligence, and will, or the 
 esse, %)osse and velle of the schoolmen, are equally found 
 in the constitution of every moral agent. So that Moral 
 Science must have a threefold character, when viewed in 
 its reference to the revealed perfections of God, and the 
 constituent elements of every created mind. The distinc- 
 tion is found in the words of the first and great com- 
 mandment, where the heart, the mind, and the strength, 
 are separately named, and placed alike under the supreme 
 law of perfect love. There is the Morality of good affec- 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 105 
 
 tions and desires, of wise and clear intelligence, and of that 
 active zeal and energy, which carries into effect the deci- 
 sions of the judgment, and the desires of the heart. 
 
 Moral Science, in this aspect, includes, first of all, a 
 pure and lofty ideal of right affection and desire. It does 
 not deal mainly and immediately, like human laws, with 
 the outward conduct alone. Its empire has its foundations 
 laid deep within the heart. It enjoins that the tree shall 
 be good, that the inward feelings and affections of the 
 heart shall he pure, in order that the life may be pure 
 also. It is a mortal enemy to all counterfeit and unreal 
 righteousness, which begins by cleansing the outside, while 
 all within may be full of extortion and excess, defiled with 
 impure lust and selfish passion. Its aim is to cast salt 
 into that hidden fountain of the heart, from whence either 
 sweet or bitter water must unceasingly flow. 
 
 This is the first and highest branch of morals, on its 
 subjective side. For here it rises above the mists which 
 settle on the sides of the mountain, or the diffracting in- 
 fluences that flow from the complex conditions of our 
 human and earthly life. In this highest region it is easier 
 than in the rest to trace out clearly the manifold results 
 and corollaries of that great law of love, equally simple 
 and sublime, which binds together the whole moral uni- 
 verse. 
 
 But if love has for its first and simplest character a 
 desire for our own good, and the good of others, or delight 
 in the contemplation of the Divine felicity, a second must 
 immediately follow. It must search diligently into the 
 nature of that good which we are bound to pursue, and 
 of those evils from which, both for ourselves and all around 
 us, we are bound to seek deliverance. 
 
 Ignorant and unwise affection defeats itself. It hinders 
 
106 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 those whom it would help, and harms those whom it 
 desires, perhaps eagerly and intensely, to succour and to 
 bless. Human life and happiness are highly complicated 
 things. There is wheel within wheel in that strange 
 machinery, on which comfort and distress, ease and pain, 
 moral progress and advancement, or decline and degrada- 
 tion, are found practically to depend. Mere wishes of 
 benevolence may too often avail little, if there be com- 
 plete ignorance or misconception of the true causes and 
 elements of human well-being. It needs patient, humble, 
 and persevering toil, self-knowledge, experience of life, 
 and study of the Word of God, to trace out clearly those 
 mysterious Nile-sources, % that hide themselves from 
 careless eyes, from whence the wide and ample streams of 
 human joy and sorrow perpetually flow. And hence one 
 important division of Moral Science must consist in what 
 Locke has made the title of a separate work, — "The 
 Conduct of the Understanding." His remarks, however 
 weighty, touch only the brink of a wide sea of thought, 
 and dwell very slightly on those aspects of the subject, in 
 which its ethical character, as one main branch of morals, 
 most distinctly appears. 
 
 Here the old Socratic or Platonic inquiry — irorepov 
 SiBatcrbv r) dperrj, whether virtue is something that can be 
 taught — finds its natural place. It links itself closely with 
 the deepest problems, not only in natural metaphysics, but 
 in revealed theology. Into these it would be premature to 
 enter now. They could not possibly be dealt with in a 
 few pages, in a manner worthy of their high importance. 
 It may be enough here to observe that an obligation to 
 seek the good and promote the welfare of others must 
 involve the duty of earnest and continued effort to see 
 clearly wherein that good and welfare really consist. 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. \OJ 
 
 1 — — — ' ' ' 
 
 The homely proverb, that " hell is paved with good 
 intentions" scarcely deserves the wide acceptance it has 
 found. We may say, with deeper truth, and a very solemn 
 meaning, that bad intentions are the real pavement, on 
 which is reared continually the dark superstructure of con- 
 summated vice and crime, and of open punishment, 
 whether in this life or the life to come. What may be 
 more truly said, in a figure, to be paved with good inten- 
 tions is that limbo of vanity, where all things 
 
 Abortive, monstrous, and unkindly mixed, 
 
 all perverse, but well-meaning follies, due to careless haste, 
 blind prejudice, or self-satisfied ignorance, wander up and 
 down in darkness as their natural home. 
 
 A general desire for happiness is the natural instinct of 
 all men. And some wish for the good of others, however 
 feeble, is so plain a dictate of conscience, that even the 
 selfish and vicious, who do not really feel it, constantly 
 feign a virtue which, as they are well aware, they ought to 
 possess, and the entire want of which must be fatal to 
 their reputation among their fellow-men. But the 
 interval is very wide between the mere instinct, or the 
 feeble, careless, and irresolute desire, and that earnest 
 effort to learn what is good and right, and then to practise 
 and promote it, which is the true sign of a genuine and 
 hearty benevolence. 
 
 A large part, then, of our moral duty must consist in 
 the right conduct of the understanding. It must include 
 the diligent, humble effort to learn, both in our own case 
 and that of others, what is the true good which claims our 
 zealous pursuit; what is the nature, and what are the 
 elements of that happiness towards which we ought to 
 aspire, and what are practically the best means by which 
 it can be really attained. 
 
108 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 A pretentious and boastful, but blind and ill-judging 
 philanthropy is one of the chief moral dangers of the 
 times in which we live. The grandeur of the object, the 
 seeming nobility of the aim, its wide and comprehensive 
 nature, too often veil the selfish pride, the rash folly, and 
 in some cases the open impiety, which first sets up a mere 
 figment in place of the great reality, and then falls down 
 and worships blindly those wretched theories of human 
 progress and political perfection, which its own fancy has 
 conceived, or its own fingers have made. 
 
 True benevolence is humble and modest. It is 
 suspicious of mere phrases. It puts no easy faith in 
 hollow and shadowy counterfeits of that good, so high, 
 noble, and excellent, which it keeps ever in view. It 
 studies carefully the lessons of experience. It listens 
 with reverence to whatever brings the credentials and 
 reasonable marks of a Divine message. It does not 
 despise the helps to human happiness, which spring 
 from wise laws, social freedom, and the progress of men 
 in those arts and sciences, which multiply the conveni- 
 ences of social life. But it knows and feels that the main 
 sources of peace and comfort must lie deeper, and be 
 sought higher, than all these. They are land-springs 
 that soon dry up and fail. They are plants too feeble 
 to resist the storm, and may soon wither or be swept 
 away in the whirlwinds of human passion. The men 
 whose love to their fellow-men is most real, deep, and 
 earnest, will distrust the cries of the passing hour, the 
 uncertain voices of popular feeling, which vary from year 
 to year, and almost from day to day. They will try to dig 
 deep, and lay their foundation on solid rock, before they 
 claim to become master-builders in so vast a work as the 
 future and lasting regeneration of the human race. Or 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. IOQ 
 
 rather, they will feel that so great and noble an end must 
 lie wholly beyond the range of their own feeble efforts. 
 And while they labour faithfully, to the best of their 
 power, and use whatever light they have attained, for the 
 good of their fellows, they will look up with reverence 
 for the promised working of a higher Power, and place 
 their hopes of success in a goodness and wisdom far 
 beyond their own. 
 
 But if high and lofty desire for the good of others be 
 one main division of moral duty, and a second is Moral 
 Wisdom, or growing acquaintance with the true nature of 
 that good we should seek to promote and attain, the third 
 is Moral Energy, or that zeal and earnestness which seeks 
 ever to carry out in practice the inward convictions 
 of the mind and heart. 
 
 Energy of will, it ought always to be clearly felt and 
 owned, cannot alone constitute moral virtue. There are 
 other conditions of right feeling, and true knowledge of 
 duty, which must first be satisfied. Where there is 
 neither goodness in the heart, nor wisdom in the un- 
 derstanding, mere activity, however restless and in- 
 cessant, will only widen the range, intensify the amount, 
 and deepen the shades, of moral guilt. To "do evil 
 with both hands earnestly " can only place men at the 
 widest possible remove from the summit of true per- 
 fection. The hero-worship which some, despairing of 
 Christianity, would exalt into a kind of religious faith, 
 is a poor and wretched substitute for Christian morality. 
 Power is not goodness, and energy of will is not moral 
 excellence. And yet, since man was made an active 
 being, in the image of God, on whose ceaseless energy 
 of wisdom and love all things depend, there is a natural 
 fitness and beauty in human energy, even apart from the 
 
I IO THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 right or wrong direction it may assume. And when true 
 benevolence is joined with earnest study of the proper 
 means by which its desires may be attained, and with a 
 hearty zeal for its actual attainment, then human virtue, 
 amidst all its weakness and imperfection, becomes a lovely 
 image and resemblance of that goodness which is infinite 
 and divine. 
 
 III. Moral Science, however, besides a threefold 
 division from the objects it embraces, and the natural 
 faculties which it involves and requires, of feeling or 
 affection, knowledge, and will, admits a further arrange- 
 ment or partition of a still deeper kind. This depends 
 on those moral capacities of obedience, transgression, and 
 recovery, which are linked, mysteriously and inseparably, 
 with the very constitution of a universe of moral agents. 
 And here, once more, the whole science naturally resolves 
 itself into three main divisions. 
 
 The first of these is Simple or Direct Ethics. Its pri- 
 mary law and formative principle is the love of being, as 
 being. This unfolds itself, as we have seen, into Personal 
 Morality, or Self-love, Social Morality, or the love of our 
 neighbour, Divine Morals, or Piety and the Love of God. 
 Or again, with reference to the human faculties, into 
 Moral Aspiration, Wisdom, and Energy, or the ethics of 
 the heart, the mind, and the strength. This last variety 
 is well summed up in the precept : " Whatsoever thy hand 
 findeth to do, do it with thy might;" and consists in that 
 moral earnestness, which constitutes true heroism, when 
 once it is devoted to the cause of truth and love. But 
 in all these varieties we have first to consider moral duty 
 in itself, or the love of being as being, without reference 
 to the moral contrasts, which experience has revealed. 
 
 The second branch is compound, and might also be 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 1 1 1 
 
 styled Diagnostic or Judicial Ethics. It is that branch 
 of the science which unfolds the law of right feeling and 
 conduct towards all beings, when viewed as capable of 
 immense moral diversity and contrast, from Divine per- 
 fection, or the highest forms of angelic or human excellence, 
 to the worst and lowest degrees of folly, vice, malice and 
 profaneness. Its double law is the love of all good, and 
 the hatred of all evil. It includes the three kindred 
 subjects, righteousness, judgment, and justice. First of all 
 it prescribes a right and just condition of the affections, 
 in contemplating all the actual or conceivable varieties of 
 moral character, so as in every case to love and admire the 
 good, but to condemn, despise, and hate, every form of 
 moral evil. In the next place it enjoins a sound exercise 
 of the judgment, so. as to discern, not only the broad con- 
 trast of good and evil, but also the various degrees of 
 virtue, moral goodness, and holy love, or of vice, depravity, 
 lust and malice, and thus to guide the determinations of 
 the will in all practical questions that may arise. In 
 the third and last place it includes justice, or the actual, 
 honest application and development of true convictions 
 and right judgment, in reference to all those cases of 
 moral contrast and diversity, which meet us, from time 
 to time, in the experience of human life, and in the con- 
 flicts of a world, where light and darkness, good and evil, 
 struggle and contend from age to age. 
 
 The third main division, which completes and crowns 
 the whole outline of the science, is Therapeutic or Reme- 
 dial Ethics. And here we have to begin by admitting a 
 weighty and solemn truth — the past and present existence 
 and wide prevalence of moral disease, which needs some 
 powerful remedy for its effectual cure. Ethics, in this 
 department, deals with moral beings, neither as upright 
 
1 1 2 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 and sinless, nor as hopelessly fallen and irreclaimably 
 corrupt, but as those who need recovery, and may be 
 recovered, from decay, weakness, and degradation, to up- 
 rightness and moral healthiness once more. 
 
 The parent truth, in this vast and large division of 
 the science, is that great fact, which forms the basis of the 
 whole economy of the Christian faith. Man, however far 
 gone from original righteousness, or the standard of a 
 pure and perfect love, is not therefore hopelessly fallen. 
 A way of life, that leads upward, is still open before him. 
 He may yet arise from the dust, loose himself from the 
 bands of his neck, and stand upright, as a moral freeman 
 once more, in the face of heaven. His sickness, however 
 sore and grievous, and incurable by mere human or 
 external remedies, admits of successful treatment by the 
 skill and love of a Divine Physician. And the science of 
 Remedial Ethics, viewed on the side of pure reason, in- 
 volves these successive elements. First, the great duty of 
 desire and longing for this moral restoration, both for 
 ourselves and others, so far as it is needed, and its possi- 
 bility has been revealed. Secondly, the duty of learning 
 what are the means by which this great recovery to a new 
 and higher moral life must first begin, and may still be 
 carried on, with all the hindrances to its birth and later 
 progress, and that provision of moral and spiritual agencies, 
 by which these various hindrances may be overcome. 
 Thirdly and lastly, the earnest practical adoption of all 
 the means of recovery and moral restoration, which Divine 
 love and wisdom may have provided for sinful men, and 
 the ceaseless and persevering progress of the soul, from 
 the miry clay of the slough of despond, towards that 
 celestial city which is the dwelling-place of light, purity, 
 and heavenly love. 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 1 1 3 
 
 These three kingdoms of Moral Science, for such they 
 may fitly be called from their largeness and extent, are in 
 other words the Ethics of Paradise, of the Law, and the 
 Gospel. And each of them in turn admits a nine-fold 
 subdivision, from the moral objects with which they deal, 
 and the faculties of the moral being out of which they 
 grow, and on which their existence depends. 
 
 Combining all three elements, we may form a com- 
 prehensive outline of the geography and whole domain of 
 Ethics, which is, under another phrase, the Science of 
 Ideal Humanity. It will then assume the following form. 
 
 A. Simple or Direct Ethics : 
 
 Its primal law and basis is Love, or genuine desire for 
 the highest happiness or welfare of all sentient being, as 
 being. 
 
 I. Personal Ethics = Pure and unselfish Self-love. 
 
 1. Self-love in affection and desire. This implies 
 the aim at our own welfare in the whole range of our 
 being. 
 
 a. Bodily welfare or health ; (a) as capable of sensa- 
 tion, — pleasure in contrast to pain ; (J5) as gifted with 
 active powers, or Gymnastics in its proper sense ; (7) as 
 capable of degrees of health and strength, — Dietetics and 
 Hygienics; (8) as capable of grace and beauty, or Cos- 
 metics and ^Esthetics. 
 
 b. Welfare in respect of Intellectual Power. " Mens 
 sana in corpore sano." 
 
 c. Moral Welfare. The pursuit of moral goodness and 
 spiritual excellence. The heathen maxim in its best sense, 
 
 Kiev dpiareveiv koI vireipoxov epjievai aXKwv : 
 
 ftjJUVE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
1 14 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 or the higher law of the Apostle, "Covet earnestly the 
 best gifts, and yet show I unto you a more excellent 
 way." 
 
 2. Self-love, with reference to the powers of the 
 mind, or Moral Wisdom. 
 
 a. Cultivation of sanitary science, wise self-preserva- 
 tion, the converse of the indirect suicide of vice and folly. 
 
 b. Mental Self-knowledge, wise discernment of special 
 gifts leading to a right selection of the pursuits of life, and 
 of work to be done. 
 
 c. Moral Self-knowledge. w Prove your own selves." 
 
 3. Self-love in Action, or Practical Culture, under the 
 guidance of moral wisdom, of all natural and acquired 
 gifts of body and mind. 
 
 II. Social Ethics = Philanthropy or General Benevo- 
 lence. 
 
 1. Benevolence in affection and desire, applied to all 
 the various relations of human life. 
 
 a. Conjugal or Married Love, in the relation of 
 husband and wife. 
 
 b. Parental and Filial. The right laws of affection 
 in the fourfold relation of father, mother, son, daughter. 
 
 c. Fraternal, or the laws of right affection in brothers 
 and sisters. 
 
 d. Domestic. Relations of master, mistress, and 
 servant. 
 
 e. Local. The duties of neighbourhood. 
 
 f. Friendship. Bonds and laws of special intimacy 
 and affection. 
 
 g. Civic Relations. Magistrate and citizen. 
 
 h. National. Relations of sovereign and subject. 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 1 1 5 
 
 i. Legislative. Varieties of social rank and consti- 
 tutional privilege. 
 
 j. International. The moral laws of right and bene- 
 volent feeling with regard to other races, and other 
 civil communities. 
 
 2. Benevolence of the Mind, or right study of the 
 means of promoting the welfare of others. 
 
 a. The Relations of Sex. b. Of Age. c. Domestic 
 Economy, d. Civil Economy, e. Political Economy, f 
 National Economy. 
 
 3. Beneficence = Social Morality in practice and 
 outward result, with reference to all the duties and rela- 
 tions of daily life. 
 
 IIT. Divine Ethics = Piety, or the Love of God, in- 
 cluding 
 
 1. The Religion of the Heart ; Adoration, gratitude, 
 obedience. 
 
 2. The Religion of the Mind. Divine contemplation, 
 and the use of all means for growth in knowledge of Divine 
 things. 
 
 3. The Religion of the Strength, or pious and holy 
 affections, and a true knowledge of God, applied faith- 
 fully in the active and outward duties of a religious life. 
 
 B. Compound or Judicial Ethics. 
 
 Its primal law and formative principle is Righteous- 
 ness, or to feel and judge of all moral agents, and act 
 towards them, according to their various characters, good 
 or evil, sinless or fallen, penitent or impenitent, proud or 
 humble, advancing or declining in their moral state. And 
 here we have, as before — 
 
 8—2 
 
Il6 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 I. Personal Ethics, including 
 
 a. Self-condemnation and self-hatred, as evil. 
 
 b. Self-respect and self-honour, so far as upright, 
 sincere, and faithful. 
 
 c. Repentance and humility. 
 
 d. True and right judgment on the personal state, 
 "whether of moral progress or moral decline. 
 
 e. Earnest aspiration after full victory over evil, and 
 a perfect restoration to moral perfection. 
 
 II. Social Righteousness, including 
 
 a. Love and esteem of the good for their goodness. 
 Z>. Hatred and contempt of the morally evil as evil. 
 
 c. Moral discernment of the true character of men. 
 
 d. Practical righteousness, in praise and blame, re- 
 ward, censure and punishment. 
 
 III. Divine Righteousness. 
 
 This includes the whole doctrine of the revealed law 
 of God, with its disclosure of the Divine holiness, its 
 threatenings and promises, in their connection with the 
 Divine attributes, and the application of its truths to the 
 hearts and consciences of men. 
 
 C. Remedial Ethics = the Morality of the Gospel, 
 viewed as a Divine provision of mercy for the healing of 
 moral disease. Here Ethical Science rises into a still 
 higher field. It becomes, in the truest sense of the term, 
 Moral Theology, and links itself with all the promises of 
 the Gospel and the hope of the life to come. It is trans- 
 figured, and loses its earthly features in a higher light 
 that beams down upon it from heaven. 
 
 This outline, however brief and imperfect, may help 
 to give some conception of the width and variety of those 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 1 1 7 
 
 fields of high and sacred thought, which lie open before 
 the general students of Moral Science. To unfold them 
 all, as their grandeur and rich variety demand, would far 
 exceed the work of a whole lifetime. But to open out, 
 in any degree, their hidden treasures, and to throw clearer 
 light on any of their hard and difficult problems, is an object 
 .worthy the ambition of every Christian heart. The moral 
 teacher, who is at all faithful to so high a trust, may have 
 to encounter misconception from the careless, or ridicule 
 and obloquy from moral triflers, in an age prone to self- 
 flattery, and far too impatient of calm and serious thought. 
 But these difficulties are only like dust in the balance, 
 and utterly to be despised, when compared with the 
 privilege of tracing out these pathways of high and holy 
 thought, which lead the spirit upward to the footstool of 
 God's throne, there to lose itself in the light which flows 
 from His presence, who is uncreated, infinite, and perfect 
 goodness. 
 
 This lesson of the true dignity of Moral Science, as 
 superior to the noblest triumphs of human skill in the 
 fields of nature, is taught most clearly in the words of the 
 patriarch, in the oldest book of inspired and sacred poetry. 
 A modern paraphrase of this voice of early antiquity, 
 which is full of such deep meaning, may bring this subject 
 to a fitting close. 
 
 Man, we are told by the tempted patriarch, is diligent 
 in searching out the hidden treasures of the earth. These 
 are all of them objects of his assiduous and successful 
 pursuit ; the veins of silver, the place of sapphires, and the 
 dust of gold. " He searcheth out all perfect things, the 
 stones of darkness, and the shadow of death." He tills 
 the earth, and reaps its plentiful harvests, so that "out of 
 it there cometh bread." He turns up its soil, and brings 
 
1 1 8 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 to light the gems, sparkling like fire, that were buried in 
 its bosom. There are paths which no fowl knoweth, and 
 the eye of the vulture cannot see, and which the wild 
 beasts of prey, roving over the forest and wilderness, have 
 never trodden. These are the pathways of Man, when he 
 sinks the shaft of his mine, puts his hand upon the 
 rocks, and pierces the sides or depths of the mountain, 
 that he may bring to light all its stores of hidden 
 treasure. But amidst all his labours, however prosperous, 
 one thing still eludes his search, and seems to baffle all 
 his industry, and the pride of his science. "Where shall 
 wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding?" 
 How shall he attain that moral insight, that true ideal 
 of human action, speech, and thought, whereby he may 
 guide his steps aright in the weary journey of this mortal 
 life, in which his days seem often to be "few and evil"? 
 How may he escape the follies of childhood, and the 
 snares of youth ; and be freed from the misery of a life 
 wasted without object or aim, cursed with vanity and 
 vexation of spirit in every moment of its swift progress 
 to the darkness and mystery of the grave ? 
 
 Here is a hard problem. The lapidary or the miner, 
 in the days of the patriarch of the eastern desert, could 
 not solve it. And it remains wholly unsolved by theories 
 of evolution, or the researches and discoveries of physical 
 philosophy to the present hour. We mine deeper than 
 ever into the bowels of the earth, and bring up fossils, 
 buried long, ages ago, and eloquent of the past, but " the 
 depth saith, It is not in me." We dredge the ocean with 
 industry and consummate skill, and from those profound 
 abysses bring up new materials for the growth of science, 
 but "the sea saith, It is not in me." We heap together 
 wealth in its most various forms, and all the costly treasures 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 1 1 9 
 
 of art ; but these do not yield that higher gift of which we 
 are in utmost need. " It cannot be gotten for gold, nor 
 can silver be weighed for the price of it." It cannot be 
 bought in exchange for the most precious jewels, for coral 
 or pearl, onyx or sapphire. Nay, even if all the costly 
 things of earth are summed together, and formed into 
 one coronet or diadem of exquisite beauty, they will not 
 buy this inestimable blessing. 
 
 " Whence then cometh wisdom ?" How shall we gain 
 that knowledge of highest worth, which may guide us 
 through the dangers of life's journey, and bring us to 
 some haven of peace and rest ? When Science fails, and 
 all nature, being eagerly questioned, gives up the task of 
 answering in despair, a higher voice makes answer. He 
 who is the Creator of this outer world, with its complex 
 powers and mysterious treasures, is also the God of the 
 spirits of all flesh, the Author and Parent of our moral 
 being. He makes a decree for the rain, and a way for 
 the lightning and the thunder. He fixes the circuits 
 of the winds, and weighs the waters by measure. But 
 this wonderful Geometer is also the Father of lights, the 
 Parent and Guide of the spirits of men. He has not 
 left us to grope blindly among His lower works for that 
 peace and hope, which can never be found in these alone. 
 He does not condemn the children of men to thirst for 
 a wisdom which will never be given, and for light on the 
 wants, duties, and destinies of the soul, which can never 
 be attained. The deeper mines of moral truth are all 
 in His sacred keeping. The precious jewels of truth, 
 wisdom, and love, that may enrich the spirit for ever, 
 are subject to His secret control. Let men only awake 
 to their true dignity, as the creatures of God, depend- 
 ent on His teaching, and their quest for moral truth 
 
120 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 and insight shall not be in vain. "When he made a 
 decree for the rain, a way for the lightning and the 
 thunder, then did He see it and declare it, He prepared 
 it, and searched it out. And unto man He said, — Behold 
 the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from 
 evil is understanding." 
 
 In this sublime apostrophe of the patriarch, we have 
 a key to the true relation between all physical science, 
 and that higher field of thought which deals with moral 
 right and wrong, sin and duty, the lessons of social Ethics 
 and of religious piety and faith. These lower pursuits, 
 in their own place and order, have a great value. But no 
 abundance in the outward arts of life can ever secure 
 human happiness, while the passions of discontent and 
 pride, envy and malice, are reigning within the hearts of 
 men. To depart from evil alone constitutes true under- 
 standing. And this victory over moral evil, whether in the 
 individual or in nations, can never be really and perma- 
 nently gained, unless moral instincts are confirmed and 
 deepened by the presence of religious faith. The two lessons 
 of the patriarch's message always go together. They have 
 been married by the Supremely Wise, and no human power 
 can effect their divorce and separation. Genuine piety, 
 or the fear of God, must lead the way; and a high social 
 morality, which, discerns evil clearly, and then departs 
 from it with a hearty aversion, is the happy sequel 
 that must ever follow. 
 
 This lesson of ancient wisdom is receiving hourly new 
 illustrations in the times in which we now live. A vain 
 and misleading philosophy may extol the power and 
 celebrate the triumphs of intellectual genius, and degrade 
 all moral truth into a meagre compendium of worthless 
 and almost unprofitable truisms. But in such comparisons. 
 
THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 121 
 
 we have only a proof that its own eyes are dim with age, 
 so that it cannot see. The grand stars of the moral firma- 
 ment are settled in the heavens, and shine on for ever. 
 The wanderer, here on earth, may lose sight of them 
 amidst the glare of meaner and earthly lights, of passing 
 and transient meteors, or they may be hidden from his 
 view by the mists and fogs that thicken around his steps. 
 But when once he looks upward with patience, in calm 
 thought, their holy light will dawn upon him once more. 
 At first it may seem very dim and feeble. But it is the 
 sign of coming daybreak, the earnest and pledge of 
 clearer insight and vision that will presently be given. 
 The higher and nobler the science, the later and the 
 longest delayed we may expect its full development to be. 
 "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
 natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." Even 
 Physical Science is still only in its childhood, and an 
 immense progress, with deeper insight into laws of nature 
 still unknown, seems to be its heritage in coming: 
 generations. But whenever the long-promised moral day- 
 break of our world shall arrive, all previous discoveries in 
 the field of physics, however large in themselves, will 
 seem almost mean and trivial, when compared with the 
 rich harvests of pure and lofty truth to be reaped in 
 this higher and nobler field. For Moral Science is nothing 
 less than the grand ideal of redeemed humanity, of which 
 the seeds and germs are planted already, but their perfect 
 growth and expansion can only be when the redemption is 
 fully come. It deals with that high and pure standard of 
 human thought, speech, and action, in which heaven stoops 
 down to the succour of human weakness, and all the 
 relations of earth are raised and transfigured, and lose 
 themselves in the light of heaven. The ideal is so bright 
 
122 THE DIVISIONS OF MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 and beautiful that our eyes are soon dazzled, when we at- 
 tempt to unfold its features by reasoning alone. It can only 
 be seen and known, loved and admired, as it ought to be, 
 when we rise above the diffracted and broken earnests of 
 mere human virtue, and gaze on the true standard of 
 humanity, where all moral perfection is summed up and 
 condensed, without limit or measure, in the person of the 
 Incarnate Son of God. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 MORALS IN RELATION TO PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 In the world of scientific thought, no less than in the 
 sphere of politics, questions of boundary and of jurisdic- 
 tion are of high importance. Of the former truth our 
 own country has had recent and painful experience. The 
 carelessness or ignorance of negotiators may breed national 
 disputes, even on matters comparatively insignificant, 
 which become a legacy of bitterness and strife to successive 
 generations. And if our country has had recent experi- 
 ence of the evils arising from boundaries ill and ambigu- 
 ously defined, its earlier history supplies examples, both in 
 its wars with France and Scotland, of the mischief arising 
 from unsettled rights, or claims of jurisdiction and feudal 
 superiority, even on a larger scale. It is a matter, then, 
 of no slight importance, to decide on the true relation 
 between Physical and Moral Science, to know where 
 the boundary lies, and whether there is a just claim, on 
 either side, to superiority and jurisdiction. 
 
 In the middle ages, and during the reign of the school- 
 men, there were serious and mischievous encroachments, 
 by theological moralists, on the domain of Physics. 
 Ingenious a priori theories of creation and its laws, such 
 as in their imperfect fancy they ought to be, replaced the 
 
124 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 use of diligent and patient inquiry into the facts them- 
 selves. The mischief revealed itself in two forms — a 
 hasty interpretation of Scripture, and a blind reliance 
 on the authority of Aristotle. And of these the latter 
 was not the less frequent, while it is less easy to palliate 
 or explain. When Scheiner announced to his Provincial 
 his own discovery of spots in the sun, he received this 
 answer: "I have read Aristotle many times from begin- 
 ning to end, and can assure you that I have nowhere 
 found in him anything similar to what you mention. 
 Go, therefore, my son, tranquillize yourself. Be assured 
 that what you take for spots in the sun are the faults of 
 your glasses or your eyes." 
 
 These faults of theologians and moralists in former 
 days seem to have caused a strong reaction in our own. 
 The turn of Physics has come, to make bold and ex- 
 tensive encroachments on Moral Science. We may 
 notice two different degrees or stages in the assump- 
 tions of superiority which some of its disciples have 
 latterly made. 
 
 The first and most complete may be seen in the 
 attempt to destroy Morals, properly so called, altogether. 
 Men may busy themselves so eagerly among laws and 
 changes of a physical and material kind, that their con- 
 science falls asleep, and they grow insensible to the human 
 elements of their own being. In this case they end by 
 denying free-will and responsibility. All changes are 
 resolved into some mysterious and fatal necessity. Con- 
 science itself becomes an acquired and secondary instinct 
 of the animal life, or a strange resultant from the combi- 
 nation of material forces, condensed by the nervous 
 system in some unknown way. Such a theory, it is 
 plain, puts an end to Moral Science altogether. The 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. I 25 
 
 name may possibly be retained for a time, but the sub- 
 stance is gone. What inherits the name of Ethics is merely 
 a branch of physiology, or some transcendental formula of 
 dynamics, which only awaits its solution by some "compe- 
 tent intelligence," some profound and subtle analyst in 
 a future age. . 
 
 The other form of usurpation or rivalry is more 1 
 limited and moderate in its hostility. It is willing to 
 allow that Morals have a sphere of their own, and that 
 man is, in some real sense of the word, a spiritual 
 being. But it claims that moral elements shall be 
 excluded wholly from the domain of Physics. It pro- 
 tests against the doctrine of final causes, as a gratuitous 
 disturbance in our search for the genuine laws of nature. 
 It refuses to see, in the frame of nature, in the structure of 
 plants and animals, any real marks of design, and would 
 thus exclude the notion of a Moral Governor and Designer, 
 if not from the whole field of human thought, at least from 
 the range of the material universe. 
 
 • It becomes, then, highly necessary for the student of 
 Morals, in the presence of such claims and theories 
 as these, to understand clearly, and hold firmly, the 
 true relation between these great kingdoms of human 
 thought. Their entire separation is unnatural and even 
 impossible. It contradicts and reverses that growing 
 tendency to unity, which marks all the recent discoveries 
 of physical philosophers themselves. 
 
 The relation, then, of Ethics to Physics may be con- 
 veniently viewed under these three heads; (1) Resem- 
 blance or Analogy; (2) Difference or Contrast, and (3) 
 Supremacy and Inalienable Jurisdiction. 
 
 There is, first of all, between Ethical and Physical 
 Science, a strong resemblance or analogy. 
 
126 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 What are the main elements, which enter into all the 
 various and complex researches of Physical Science? 
 There are four main facts or principles, on which, when 
 we examine it closely, the whole superstructure will be 
 seen to depend. 
 
 And first, there is a Fundamental Fact of Experience, 
 or the existence of outward objects, which we can see, 
 feel, handle and observe. Thus we gain the conception of 
 Space and a Material World. The materialism, which 
 denies mind altogether, has sometimes, by reaction, 
 given birth to a mystic idealism, which resolves matter 
 into states of thought, and denies the existence of an 
 outward world. Such a theory, if the instincts of common 
 sense did not rebel against it, and set it aside virtually 
 even with its own disciples, would be fatal to the existence 
 of all Physical Science. 
 
 A second main element in all Physics is the recog- 
 nition of fixed and necessary laws or relations among these 
 outward objects, such as the truths of Arithmetic and 
 Geometry. Their distinctive nature is that we not only 
 receive them as true, but we cannot conceive them to 
 be reversed. Their opposite is recognized as a self-con- 
 tradiction. 
 
 A third element, distinct from the last, is the presence 
 of laws which are actual, but not conceived to be necessary, 
 and which are found to link past, present, and future 
 changes together. Their discovery, so as to infer from 
 the present state of the visible world an actual past and 
 an expected future, is the main object of all physical 
 research. These laws do not result from a priori reasoning. 
 Their existence has to be determined by careful deduction 
 from observed facts. It is not an inference of pure reason, 
 but depends on actual experience and observation alone. 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 12 J 
 
 Lastly, in all physical science there are actual con- 
 ditions, whether constants or variables, which constitute 
 the materials to which laws have reference, and without 
 which those laws could not even exist. These are almost 
 innumerable, more numerous than the atoms of which 
 the universe is composed. On their mutual relations 
 and incessant changes all the phenomena of Physics 
 depend. 
 
 Now Moral Science has the closest resemblance to 
 Physics in these its four main constituent elements. Its. 
 fundamental fact is the Conscience, or in other words the 
 existence of Moral Agents, gifted with the power of choice, 
 capable of knowing good and evil, in whom feelings of 
 moral praise or blame spontaneously arise. Its first pos- 
 tulate, answering to that of Physics, is the reality of a 
 moral universe. Next, there are necessary laws and re- 
 lations, discernible by the conscience, and the opposite 
 of which, when examined, give rise to a feeling of self- 
 contradiction and inconceivability. Such are the truths 
 and first principles of Pure Ethics, the hatefulness of 
 treachery and malice, the beauty and excellence of genuine 
 love. 
 
 Still further, in Morals as in Physics, there are laws 
 which are found to be actual, but are not felt to be 
 necessary, so that a different constitution of things may 
 readily be conceived. These are conclusions from actual 
 experience with regard to the faculties of man and his 
 moral capacities, and the special relationships and re- 
 sulting obligations of human life. Last of all, a com- 
 pleted moral science involves a knowledge of the actual 
 state of the moral universe, at least of that part which is 
 accessible to us, the race of mankind. It includes a wide 
 range of experience, and a full acquaintance with the 
 
128 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 varieties of human character, and the countless forms of 
 probation, and moral advancement or decay. 
 
 In these main features Morals and Physics have the 
 closest resemblance. Both alike include the phenomenal 
 and the real, the actual and the necessary, changing 
 circumstances and invariable laws, facts of experience 
 and deductions of reason. It is on right apprehension 
 of these, in their essential distinctness, and their inse- 
 parable union, that the growth and reality of either 
 science depends. 
 
 But the relation of Ethics to Physical Science includes 
 also some important features of difference and contrast. 
 
 The first contrast, which must strike every candid 
 and thoughtful mind, is in their dignity and import- 
 ance. Physics, in its narrower sense, deals with lifeless 
 matter. Botany and Zoology rise higher, and deal with 
 living things, plants and animals, of which the highest 
 powers are animal instinct alone. Moral science deals with 
 persons, not with things. And the persons, who form its 
 object, are not merely sentient, but reasonable beings. 
 They are capable of knowing themselves, and each other, 
 and of rising to the knowledge and love of the Father of 
 their spirits, the Creator of the whole universe. Man is 
 higher than mere animals or lifeless matter; and the 
 science which deals with human thoughts and duties, 
 hopes and fears, must be nobler than even the highest 
 departments of philosophy. 
 
 There is a further contrast of necessity and freedom. 
 Matter is subject to a law of physical compulsion. It has 
 no choice but to obey. Obedience here is perfect, and 
 deviation impossible. But Moral Beings have a power of 
 choice. The law under which they are placed is one of 
 duty and right, not of fatal necessity. It is one which 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 1 29 
 
 ought to be kept, but may be broken. The Actual and 
 the Ideal here diverge and part from each other. And 
 as the powers entrusted to such agents are of a higher 
 kind, so in their case there is the possibility of a deeper 
 fall. Experience proves how wide may be the melancholy 
 interval between the law of duty and the actual conduct 
 of mankind. 
 
 There is a difference also of colour and tone. For 
 Physics, in a figurative sense of the word, may not unfitly 
 be styled a colourless science. It dwells in a region of 
 dry light. Its truths have only a remote and indirect 
 relation to the feelings of the heart. But Morals are a 
 science to which that name is only spaiingly applied, 
 because its truths are more than objects of intellectual 
 perception alone. They are vocal with strong emotion, 
 and awaken deep echoes in the hearts of men. They stir 
 the depths of the spirit with feelings of sympathy and 
 antipathy, of remorse and self-approval, of praise and 
 blame, and open out hidden fountains of pity and grati- 
 tude, of enthusiastic admiration and earnest love. 
 
 In the practical aim of the two kinds of knowledge 
 there is also an important difference. Physics increase 
 the power of man over nature, and thus help to secure 
 his comfort in all economy of his outward life. But the 
 deepest wants of the human heart lie beyond its range. 
 Its discoveries, however important in their own sphere, 
 leave these unsatisfied. It cannot tell men why life has 
 been given them, and to what uses it should be applied. 
 It solves none of those doubts and questionings which 
 arise in their conscience, in the pauses of business, or in 
 the prospect of death and the grave. It throws no light 
 on the dark problem of moral evil, on the secret of human 
 guilt, depravity, and sorrow, or on the nature and the 
 
 B.L. 9 
 
130 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 symptoms of a disease so melancholy, and the possibility 
 of its cure. 
 
 There is another important contrast between Physics 
 and Morals in the conditions on which their progress 
 depends. In Physics these are intellectual only. All 
 that is needed is to bring to the inquiry a clear under- 
 standing, and the power of lucid and continuous thought. 
 But moral insight requires moral, no less than intellectual 
 conditions, in those who desire to attain it. There must 
 be singleness of purpose, a real desire to learn the 
 truth, and a willingness to obey that truth, so far as 
 knowledge of it has been attained. The sentence among 
 the sayings of Ali is both simple and profoundly true : 
 "Knowledge calleth out to Practice. If it answer, well. 
 If not, knowledge goeth away." The same principle has 
 the sanction of a far higher authority. " If thine eye be 
 single, thy whole body shall be full of light." " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." To attain 
 fuller and clearer insight into moral truth, one first 
 requisite is practical obedience to the measure of truth 
 already attained. 
 
 But the relation of Morals to Physical Science is not 
 merely one of fundamental harmony and partial con- 
 trast. It includes further a lawful claim to supremacy 
 and jurisdiction. 
 
 These two main kingdoms of thought, though widely 
 distinct, and marked by some strong features of separa- 
 tion and contrast, are by no means wholly independent. 
 On close inquiry, they will be found to have bonds of 
 close and inseparable union. Whenever ethical truth 
 has to be applied to the actual circumstances of our human, 
 mortal life, Physical Science will be found to have an 
 important bearing on all the details of moral duty. But 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 131 
 
 Moral Science claims jurisdiction and supremacy over all 
 departments of Physical Study, on the clear and simple 
 ground that these last form one main field of human 
 action. They must therefore abide under the dominion of 
 the great laws of morals, alike in the first opening of 
 physical research, in its later progress, and its final 
 application. Moral ideas are not excluded from the field of 
 Physics, as some in these days have very erroneously con- 
 ceived. On the contrary, they form one essential and in- 
 separable constituent in all its problems, when once we 
 look below the surface, and examine the deep foundations 
 on which they rest. 
 
 To gain such a knowledge of natural laws, that from 
 observation of present phenomena we may be able 
 to trace out past, and predict future changes, is the 
 grand problem of physical research in reference to the 
 outward and material universe. But the lessons implied 
 in this hard problem seem not seldom to be overlooked 
 and forgotten, even by scientific men. Let us suppose the 
 complex and transcendental function to be ascertained, 
 from which future analysts of competent intelligence, 
 whether by integration or infinite series, are to deduce 
 from the present state of our earth the structure of a 
 primitive nebula, countless ages ago, and then to pre- 
 dict with certainty, not only the eclipses and meteoric 
 showers, but the wind and the weather, and perhaps even 
 the flights of locusts and birds of passage, in distant ages 
 to come. Let us lay aside for the present the natural 
 inquiry, whether animal instincts, and still more the 
 human will, may not disturb the meshes of that physical 
 constraint and necessity, in which these theorists thrive, 
 like the Philistines, to bind down the mighty forces of the 
 spirit of man, and make it work and grind in chains in a 
 
 9—2 
 
MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 dark prisonhouse of destiny. Still, when this mighty for- 
 mula is framed, on the solution of which the vast problem is 
 to depend, it must include the three coordinates of every 
 atom of matter, or of any physical medium more subtle 
 than common matter, in the whole created universe. 
 These are the conditions of the problem, the indetermi- 
 nates that need to be determined, and on which the solu- 
 tion must depend. The time enters only as one indetermi- 
 nate in addition to all the rest. Now Physical Science 
 proposes simply this problem, from the known present to 
 infer the changes of past time, and predict those of the 
 distant future. Assuming all the other data to be 
 ascertained, it would express the state of all the parts 
 of the outward universe as functions of the time alone. 
 Thus its utmost triumph is to get rid of one variable out 
 of a number three times greater than the number of all 
 the atoms of the material universe — a number amounting 
 to trillions of trillions, and practically infinite. All these 
 countless conditions of its own vast problem physical 
 laws cannot in the least explain. For the laws might be 
 unaltered, and these elements, on which their application 
 depends, might be infinitely varied. Let us assume the 
 existence of a thousand bodies only, and that their 
 motions, through successive ages, are determined by their 
 mutual gravitation alone. Still we might multiply a 
 million into itself a million times, and not exhaust the 
 conceivable varieties of the first position, by which, in 
 virtue of the law, every later position would be deter- 
 mined. How, then, can the actual values of these posi- 
 tions be explained ? By transferring our thoughts, either 
 to the remote past or distant future, we do not lessen 
 their number: it remains unchanged^ They can be ac- 
 counted for in one way alone. From the laws we must 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 133 
 
 rise to the Lawgiver. We must accept the ideas of 
 creation, and of an Intelligent Cause ; a Divine Person, who 
 is capable not only of establishing laws of nature, but of 
 choosing out those elements and conditions for their 
 activity, which satisfy objects of a higher kind, and 
 subserve the purposes of a mighty scheme of universal 
 providence. 
 
 It has been affirmed lately, by a skilful and popular 
 experimentalist, that "the scientific mind can find no 
 repose in the mere registration of sequence in nature. 
 The further question intrudes with resistless might — 
 whence comes the sequence ? What is it that binds the 
 consequent with the antecedent in nature? The truly 
 scientific intellect can never attain rest until it reaches 
 the forces by which the observed succession is produced. 
 It was thus with Torricelli. It was thus with Newton. 
 It is thus preeminently with the real scientific man of 
 the present day. He knows further that the succession, 
 besides being permanent, is necessary. Not until this 
 relation between forces and phenomena has been esta- 
 blished, is the law of reason rendered concentric to the law 
 of nature ; and not until this is effected does the mind of 
 the scientific philosopher rest in peace." 
 
 These remarks are true, so far as they affirm the tran- 
 sition from mere phenomena to causes, forces, or powers, to 
 be the genuine instinct and tendency of a philosophic 
 mind. This is in reality the exact antithesis of Modern 
 Positivism, which places force and power among those 
 hurtful metaphysical abstractions, which mark the imma- 
 ture youth or childhood of science, and affects to limit all 
 sound research to the registration of phenomena alone. 
 But when they affirm that necessity enters into the true 
 scientific conception of every law of nature, they fall into 
 
134 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 an error no less glaring and conspicuous than the positive 
 doctrine which they condemn. It is hard to explain the 
 process of thought, by which a view is ascribed to the first 
 of physical discoverers, and enforced by the authority of 
 his name, which he has deliberately rejected, and has 
 even devoted the last pages of his immortal work to its 
 brief and decisive refutation. This doctrine of physical 
 necessity he places in the same rank with the theory of 
 vortices, and treats it as still more opposed to sound, 
 philosophical reason. He writes in his closing Scholium 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Elegantissima haecce Solis, planetarum et cometarum 
 compages nonnisi consilio et dominio Entis intelligentis et 
 potentis oriri potuit. Hie omnia regat, non ut animi 
 mundi, sed ut universorum dominus. Hunc cognoscimus 
 per sapientissimas et optimas rerum structural, et causas 
 finales, et admiramur ob perfectiones ; veneramur autem 
 et colimus ob dominium. A casca necessitate metaphysica 
 quae utique eadem est semper et ubique, nulla oritur 
 rerum variatio. Tota rerum conditarum pro locis et 
 temporibus diversitas, ab ideis et voluntate Entis necessario 
 existentis solummodo oriri potuit." 
 
 But the falsehood of the view does not rest solely on 
 the high authority of Newton, to whom an appeal in its 
 favour has been so strangely and rashly made. It results 
 immediately from careful reflection on the nature of known 
 physical laws themselves. The only necessity which a 
 really scientific mind can recognize in them is a hypothe- 
 tical necessity, or a certain connection between the law, 
 assumed as real, and acting alone, and motions or positions 
 that will follow. Assume such forces to operate, and 
 that they operate undisturbed and unmingled, and motions 
 or changes of such and such a kind will assuredly result. 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. I 35 
 
 But there is here no answer at all to the question why 
 these laws, and not others, actually exist, since others are 
 equally calculable and conceivable. There is no proof, and 
 hardly a presumption, that these laws, so far as they are 
 known, may not be hourly modified by other physical 
 laws, which are still unknown ; or intersected and varied, 
 constantly or periodically, by the action of other laws, 
 dependent on spiritual agency, of a different and higher 
 kind. Still further, the existence of the law, when 
 admitted, furnishes no key to the special elements, almost 
 infinite in number and complexity, on which its whole 
 operation depends. These countless indeterminates, amidst 
 possibilities still more countless, can be accounted for 
 only by the choice of an Intelligent Creator, who has 
 selected, out of countless possibilities physically indif- 
 ferent, those which fulfil the secret aims of His moral 
 government of an intelligent universe. By this key they 
 may be perfectly explained, and by this alone. 
 
 Moral ideas, then, are not excluded from the field of 
 Natural Philosophy, but, as Newton felt and taught, are 
 its highest and crowning portion. The utmost attainment 
 of mere physical research is to link the details of the 
 present, by some law of connection, with the past and the 
 future. But if we would answer the question, why the 
 innumerable conditions which experience reveals are such 
 as it reveals, and no other, when our reason clearly 
 perceives that the possible alternatives, which have no real 
 existence, are still more innumerable, we must rise beyond 
 mere Physics into a higher field ; and recognize with 
 reverence the supreme will and choice of the Divine 
 Creator, " to discourse of whom from the appearances 
 of things does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy." 
 The world must have been framed for a higher end than 
 
136 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 to give room for the evershifting and aimless motion of 
 lifeless atoms. It was formed, by Divine Wisdom, to be 
 inherited by creatures capable of worship, obedience, and 
 love. 
 
 Physical studies, again, in their very outset, need to 
 be guided and animated by a moral purpose. 
 
 Why am I to seek a fuller knowledge of the world 
 around me ? Is it to be only the satisfaction of a blind 
 impulse, like that of the butterfly that passes idly from 
 flower to flower, or the tiger that seizes fiercely on its prey? 
 Men of science claim instinctively for their pursuits a 
 higher character, and place them above the level of mere 
 selfish trading or luxurious self-indulgence. Truth is the 
 prize at which they aim. They long to pierce below the 
 surface, and to gain a fuller and clearer insight than others 
 around them, or even their own predecessors have attained, 
 into the reality of things. Their ambition is to gain some 
 KTrifia e? del, a lasting inheritance of truth and knowledge 
 for ages to come. 
 
 Such a quest of truth in the field of Physics is right 
 and good in itself. But there are three conditions or 
 moral laws it must obey. First, it should be the love of 
 truth as truth, for its own sake, and not as a mere engine of 
 power to astonish the vulgar, or to secure some mercenary 
 object. They must use all their attainments in the spirit 
 of love, and adopt the well-known prayer of Bacon, that the 
 Father of lights may enrich their fellows with some new 
 benefits through their labours. And it must be a love of 
 truth in its due order and proportion. It is not only 
 an intellectual anomaly, but a moral evil to be condemned 
 and deplored, when truths of secondary importance are 
 sought with eager diligenc3 ; while truths far higher, the 
 grand lessons of moral duty, and the mysteries of 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 1 37 
 
 religious faith and hope, are passed by with careless in- 
 difference, or even rejected with open scorn, and thrust 
 contemptuously away. 
 
 Not only the first steps in physical research, but its 
 whole later progress, is subject to the laws of moral 
 obligation. All the treasures it pours at the feet of its 
 disciples, like mere material wealth, need to submit to a 
 double rule on which their right use depends. That rule 
 is one of distribution and consecration. Physical knowledge, 
 it is plain, ought never to be viewed as a private monopoly, 
 for the benefit and honour of a few philosophers alone. 
 And this obligation, too often overlooked or denied in 
 former ages, is usually recognized in our own day. 
 But there is another rule of a still higher kind, which 
 is often disobeyed. The more we learn of the secrets 
 of nature, the fuller and larger is the tribute of honour 
 and reverence we are bound to pay to the God of nature, 
 the Author of that wonderful and mysterious universe, 
 whose hidden secrets He permits us to explore. 
 
 It was said once, in Newton's days, that "an undevout 
 astronomer is mad." An opposite saying of M. Comte, in 
 late years, has gained a mournful celebrity, that the 
 heavens now reveal no glory but that of Copernicus, 
 Kepler, Newton, Herschel, Laplace, and the other great 
 discoverers in astronomy. That science, if this were true, 
 would have become a fallen star. It would have dropped, 
 like a meteor, from its place in the moral firmament. But 
 such a hateful degradation of a noble pursuit, however 
 widely it may spread for a little moment, is unnatural 
 and monstrous. lice mibeculce transibunt. Soon or late 
 the moral law, neglected for a moment by some physical 
 students, will resume its just authority, and the words of 
 the Psalmist become the keynote of all physical research 
 
138 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 once more : " In His hand are the deep places of the 
 earth, and the strength of the hills is his also. The 
 sea is His, and He made it, and His hand prepared the 
 dry land. come ! let us worship and fall down, and 
 kneel before the Lord our Maker!" " How excellent, O 
 Lord, is Thy name in all the earth, who hast set Thy 
 glory above the heavens ! " 
 
 Once more, all physical researches, when successfully 
 completed, need to receive »a moral application. This 
 truth is beautifully expressed by Lord Bacon in these well 
 known words : — 
 
 "Wherefore, in the opening of our work, we pour out 
 most humble and ardent prayers to God the Father, 
 God the Word, and God the Spirit, that mindful of the 
 cares of the human race and of the pilgrimage of that 
 life, in which we spend days few and evil, they would 
 deign, through our hands, to enrich with new benefits the 
 human family. And this moreover we humbly pray, that 
 human things may not injure the divine, and that from 
 the opening of the gates of sense, and a greater kindling 
 of natural light, there may arise in our minds no unbelief 
 and darkness towards divine mysteries. But that rather, 
 from a pure understanding, purged from phantasies and 
 vanity, and not the less remaining wholly subject to the 
 divine oracles, the things of faith may be given to faith. 
 Finally, that the poison of knowledge, infused by the 
 serpent, whereby the human mind is puffed up and 
 inflated, being put away, we may be wise with sobriety, 
 and cultivate the truth in love." 
 
 There are many different ways in which Physics, 
 rightly pursued, may fulfil a high moral purpose, and own 
 the superiority and minister to the progress of ethical 
 truth. They serve to enlarge and ennoble our concep- 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 1 39 
 
 tions of the vastness of creation. They reveal, in every 
 part, the wide dominion and supremacy of law, and thus 
 convey a lesson of deep significance, when we transfer it 
 to the higher field of human thought and action. They 
 exhibit, in a striking picture, in all the celestial motions, 
 and the unvarying constancy with which the physical laws 
 of nature are obeyed, the beauty and excellency, among 
 moral agents, of a perfect and faultless obedience to the 
 supreme standard of right and truth. They disclose also, 
 the further and deeper we search out the secrets of nature, 
 an immense want and void in all mere physical theories 
 of the universe, which can only be filled up and supplied, 
 when we pass beyond them, and see in them the outer 
 porch to a glorious temple of moral and spiritual truth. 
 And lastly, when we gaze upon the fields of nature with 
 patient thought, and trace out the structure and manifold 
 harmonies of the material creation, we may see them 
 stored with wonderful and various analogies, framed by 
 the Supreme Architect and Governor, in order to raise our 
 dull thoughts, through physical emblems and earthly 
 shadows, to the clearer discernment of the nobler truths 
 and deeper mysteries of the spiritual world. 
 
 The modern theory, which would isolate Physical 
 Science wholly from moral truth, and form the visible 
 universe into a gigantic preserve, sacred from all intrusion 
 of direct spiritual agency, where blind destiny alone is to 
 rule, undisturbed by any subordination to a moral purpose, 
 and condemned to roll for ever the stone of Sisyphus, 
 without ministering to the moral government of re- 
 sponsible creatures — like the old hypothesis of Cartesian 
 vortices — "is pressed with many difficulties." It contradicts 
 and reverses that tendency. to unity which is one main 
 feature in the whole course of recent scientific discovery. 
 
140 MORALS IN RELATION TO 
 
 It leaves unexplained, and wholly inexplicable, nearly- 
 all the constituent elements of every physical problem, 
 those constants or conditions, without which no physical 
 law can exist, and on which its vitality wholly depends. 
 It leaves the choice of the laws themselves, out of many 
 others equally conceivable, an enigma of which no solu- 
 tion can be found. It degrades the physical universe 
 into a wide, vast chaos of unmeaning changes, a machine 
 with no work to do, and by which no real work is 
 ever done, a maze without plan, purpose, or object; 
 where mighty forces are changing their shape every 
 hour, and still, in every shape alike, are subject to 
 the curse of utter vanity ; where countless suns, and 
 planets, and systems, and forms of transient, perish- 
 able life, find their true description from first to last in 
 the mist out of which they are supposed to have been 
 
 born, — 
 
 A thousand wreaths of dangling water smoke, 
 That, like a broken purpose, waste in air. 
 
 How far nobler and higher is that view of the relation 
 between Physics and Morals, which genuine science and 
 true Christian faith equally serve to reveal! "All crea- 
 tures strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving." All 
 nature points and looks upward. All outward laws sub- 
 serve a moral purpose, and are wisely selected to constitute 
 a worthy theatre for a grand scheme of moral government. 
 Even when man turns away his eyes from heaven, and 
 refuses to look upward, he may find, in the wide and vast 
 ocean of physical change that lies beneath him, the reflec- 
 tions and images of heavenly things. The senses of the 
 body represent to us the higher moral perceptions and 
 capacities of the human soul. The starry spaces, and the 
 unfathomed depths of earth and ocean, represent equally 
 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 141 
 
 the vast range of unexplored mysteries in the spiritual 
 universe. But when we seek to rest in these shadows, and 
 mistake them for the substance to which they are Divine 
 way-marks, they disappoint us, and elude our grasp. We 
 seek a portion in them, but cannot find it. The wiiole range 
 of Physical Science must ever remain, to the immortal 
 spirit of man, a desolate wilderness, a land of darkness, 
 shadows, and death ; until we own in it the work of an 
 all-wise Creator, the destined theatre for a wide dominion 
 of perfect goodness. We may then look forward in hope 
 to a time when order shall come out of seeming confusion, 
 and light out of darkness ; and when all the laws of nature, 
 and all the perplexing changes of providence, shall be 
 seen to be the appointed handmaids to one grand, eternal 
 counsel of Creative Wisdom and Redeeming Love. 
 
LECTUBE VII. 
 
 MORALS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The relation of Ethics to Political Economy, even more 
 than to simple Physics, is a subject of deep and growing 
 practical importance in the present day. The want of 
 clear and just ideas on their close connection, with the 
 inseparable dependence of true economical science on the 
 grand lessons and laws of Social Morality, has led already 
 to very serious evils. How these may be resisted and 
 overcome is one of those weighty problems, which claims 
 for its solution the earnest effort of every Christian 
 mind and heart. No remedy can be found for them, 
 unless the basis be laid in sounder and deeper views of 
 the whole question than have usually prevailed. 
 
 Political Economy is an ambiguous phrase. The sense 
 in which it has been commonly used diverges sensibly 
 from its proper and natural meaning. For Economy, as 
 Sismondi has well observed, means by its derivation 
 "the law of the house." The compound phrase, then, 
 should naturally denote principles or laws to regulate 
 that larger household, which forms a human state or 
 political society. But the science usually intended by 
 the phrase has a more limited range, and might per- 
 haps be more fitly styled, " Natural Polity." It is that 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 143 
 
 branch of Political Science, which deals with outward 
 nature, and the material objects that surround us, and 
 teaches how these may be best adapted and applied to the 
 social wants of mankind. 
 
 The looseness and inexactness of the name has been 
 attended with no slight degree of uncertainty and variety 
 in the definitions of this modern science. Sir J. Stuart 
 says that "its principal object is to secure a certain 
 measure of subsistence for all the inhabitants of a country, 
 to obviate every circumstance which may render it preca- 
 rious, and to provide every thing necessary for supplying 
 the wants of society." M. Storch says that "it is the 
 science of the natural laws which determine the prosperity 
 of nations, that is to say, their wealth and their civilisa- 
 tion." M. Sismondi defines its object to be "the physical 
 welfare of man, so far as it can be the work of govern- 
 ment." M. Say remarks that "it combines the results of 
 our observations on the nature and functions of the 
 different parts of the social body." Mr M'Culloch defines 
 it "as the science of values, or of the laws which regulate 
 the production, accumulation, distribution, and consumption 
 of those articles or products that are necessarily useful or 
 agreeable to man, and possess exchangeable value." But he 
 adds that "its object is to point out those means by which 
 the industry of man may be rendered most productive of 
 wealth, to ascertain the circumstances most favourable to 
 its accumulation, the proportions in which it is divided, 
 and the mode in which it may be most advantageously 
 consumed." 
 
 Mr Senior objects to some of these definitions, that 
 they are too ambitious, and include a range which " far 
 exceeds the bounds of a single treatise, or the powers of 
 any single mind. The questions to what extent and 
 
144 MORALS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 under what circumstances the possession of wealth is 
 beneficial or injurious, what distribution of wealth is most 
 desirable, &c, are of great interest and difficulty ; but no 
 more form part of Political Economy, in the sense in 
 which we use the term, than navigation forms 4 part of the 
 science of Astronomy." "The subject of legislation," he 
 observes, "is not wealth, but human welfare. On the 
 other hand, Political Economy treats not of happiness, but 
 wealth. Its premises consist of few general propositions, 
 scarcely requiring proof or formal statement, which almost 
 every man, as soon as he hears them, admits as familiar 
 to his thoughts ; and his inferences are nearly as general, 
 and if he has reasoned correctly, as certain as his premises. 
 Those which relate to the nature and production of wealth 
 are universally true. But these conclusions, whatever 
 their generality and truth, do not warrant the economist 
 in adding a single syllable of advice. That privilege 
 belongs to the writer or statesman, who has considered all 
 the causes which may promote or impede the general 
 welfare. The business of the Economist is neither to 
 recommend nor to dissuade; but to state general principles, 
 which it is fatal to neglect, but neither advisable nor 
 perhaps practicable to use as the sole guides in the actual 
 conduct of affairs." 
 
 Mr Mill agrees mainly with Mr Senior in his definition 
 of the science. It professes, he says, " to teach or investi- 
 gate the nature of wealth, and the laws of its production 
 and distribution, including directly or remotely the opera- 
 tion of all the causes by which the condition of mankind, 
 or of any human society, in respect to this universal 
 object of human desire, is made prosperous or adverse. 
 It undertakes to set forth as much as is known of the 
 laws and principles according to which these causes 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 145 
 
 operate." "All know that it is one thing to be rich, 
 another thing to be enlightened, brave or humane ; that 
 the questions how a nation is made wealthy, and how it is 
 made free, virtuous, or eminent in literature, the fine arts, 
 arms or polity, are totally distinct inquiries." 
 
 On the strength of these definitions Mr Senior vindi- 
 cates writers on Political Economy from a charge some- 
 times brought against them. "It has often," he says, 
 "been made a matter of grave complaint that they confine 
 their attention to wealth, and disregard all consideration 
 of happiness or virtue. It is to be wished that this com- 
 plaint were better founded. No one blames a writer upon 
 tactics for confining his attention to military affairs. An 
 author who, having stated that a given conduct is produc- 
 tive of wealth, should, on that account alone, recommend 
 it, or assume that it ought to be pursued, would be guilty 
 of the absurdity of implying that happiness and the 
 possession of wealth are identical. But his error would 
 consist, not in confining his attention to wealth, but in 
 confounding wealth with happiness. Supposing that, error 
 avoided, the more strictly a writer confines his attention 
 to his own science, the more likely he is to extend its 
 bounds." 
 
 Political Economists in general have by no means 
 observed the rule Mr Senior lays down for their guidance, 
 that they are not warranted in offering " a single syllable 
 of advice." There are few articles of general commerce of 
 which the production has been more copious and abundant. 
 Whatever the demand for it, either on the part of states- 
 men or of the general public, it has usually been far 
 exceeded by the supply. The consequence, in agreement 
 with the maxims of their favourite science, has been a 
 frequent depreciation in the market value of the counsels 
 B. L. 10 
 
146 MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 they have offered. Separate laws, and whole systems of 
 finance and legislation, social customs, the conduct of 
 landlords, manufacturers, merchants, and workmen, have 
 all in turn been the constant objects of their praise and 
 censure, from their agreement or disagreement with the 
 supposed teaching of Political Economy, and on that 
 ground alone. The claim that other and deeper principles 
 •ought to be kept in view, and that outward wealth is not 
 the highest aim of personal conduct or national legislation, 
 has been often ascribed to ignorance or perverseness, and 
 -a culpable neglect of the discoveries of this modern 
 science. It is clearly essential to settle this internal 
 dispute among its teachers and disciples, and decide on 
 its true nature and limits, before we can form a correct 
 view of its relations to Ethics, and trace the links of con- 
 nection which bind the two subjects in close and in- 
 separable union. 
 
 There are plainly, then, two opposite tendencies at 
 work among the writers on Political Economy. One class, 
 of whom Sismondi is one representative, endeavour to 
 retain the true and proper sense of the phrase, as import- 
 ing the right guidance and direction of the State, as a 
 larger household. These enlarge and widen the range of 
 the science, and make human welfare its true object. 
 But in the same degree they render it vague as well as 
 comprehensive, and would make it almost synonymous with 
 the pursuit of happiness, or the highest good, personal and 
 social, so as to include wisdom and prudence applied to 
 the conduct of human life, in all their most varied forms. 
 Others, like Mr Senior, confine it to the laws of material 
 wealth alone. Viewed as a science, its proper name would 
 then seem to be Plutonomy, or the study of the laws by 
 which wealth is produced* and distributed ; and as an art, 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 147 
 
 Chrematistics, or skill in acquiring all those things which 
 are bought and sold in the market, and which money alone 
 can procure. The science, on this more limited view of 
 its nature, gains in precision. But in the same proportion 
 it becomes technical, partial, and limited in its range, and 
 is liable to be deceptive in the highest degree, when we 
 turn from its theories to their practical application. Two 
 alternatives are open to its students. They may under- 
 stand the science in its narrower sense, and then profess 
 their incompetency to give practical counsel in questions 
 of private conduct and national legislation from its teach- 
 ing alone. Or they may claim the character of public 
 instructors in all these questions, and widen the range of 
 the science, so as to include mental as well as material 
 riches, and all the moral elements on which human happi- 
 ness depends. But the most fatal course, and one of the 
 most frequent, is a vague, uneasy oscillation between 
 these extremes. The science is then rigidly confined to 
 the study of material wealth, when its theories are being 
 formed in the closet of its teachers and disciples, and is ■ 
 promoted into the oracle of truth, happiness, and genuine 
 wisdom, when it is sought to apply them for the guidance 
 of men and nations in the actual business of life. 
 
 The true and just view of the subject lies between these 
 opposite extremes. Political Economy, in the modern 
 sense of the term, might be more properly called Chre- 
 matics, or Natural Polity. It consists in the research and 
 discovery of those laws which regulate the relations be- 
 tween men, and all those outward objects which minister 
 to their life, health, comfort, intellectual progress, and 
 moral welfare. It is therefore part of a greater whole. 
 It deals with men in their relation to the outward world. 
 But the wealth on which it reasons, though an end with 
 
 10—2 
 
148 MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 reference to the processes of production and distribution, 
 is really only a means to a further end, the true good 
 and welfare of men. When divorced from this higher 
 aim, like the manna when hoarded unseasonably, it breeds 
 worms and turns to corruption. The food becomes first 
 husks, and then poison. The gold and silver rust and 
 are cankered, and when the mischief proceeds further, eat 
 the flesh as a consuming fire. 
 
 To avoid this great danger, two main aspects of the 
 science must be clearly distinguished, and even con- 
 trasted, which too many Political Economists are per- 
 petually confounding together. The first may be called 
 Natural or Physical, the second Moral Chrematics. The 
 first treats of the actual tendencies of production, com- 
 merce, and trade, when men apply themselves to the 
 satisfaction of their own wants and desires in the use of 
 outward objects, under the guidance of instinctive self- 
 love or prudential selfishness alone. The second deals 
 with a harder and higher subject, what is the true standard 
 of right and duty in this wide field of human action, and 
 how far the impulses of selfishness, and the calculations 
 of mere prudence and worldly interest, ought to be re- 
 strained, guided, ennobled, and sometimes even reversed, 
 by the higher claims of social benevolence and religious 
 faith. 
 
 The intimate relation between Moral Truth and 
 genuine Political Economy may be seen in three different 
 aspects of economical science. 
 
 The first of these refers to the province of government, 
 and the nature of those elements on which the wisdom 
 of all varieties of human legislation must depend. 
 
 Political Economy, we are told, has for its object "not 
 happiness, but wealth." Wise laws, however, must plainly 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 149 
 
 have for their object, not wealth but happiness, or the 
 true welfare of the nation, and the individuals of whom 
 it is composed. The two ideas, it is admitted, are in 
 their own nature distinct and separable. Whenever in 
 practice they diverge and separate, the teaching of the 
 secondary science, which deals only with outward wealth, 
 will have to be modified, and sometimes even reversed 
 by the just authority of higher truth. 
 
 It follows, from the reality of the distinction, that laws 
 may be of four kinds.. They may hinder wealth, and 
 diminish happiness, or may be promotive of wealth and 
 of happiness also. Other, again, may encourage the growth 
 of outward riches, and be morally injurious. Others, lastly, 
 may restrain special modes or forms of industrial activity, 
 by which material riches might be increased, but may 
 still, for other and higher reasons, be conducive to the 
 public welfare. 
 
 Free trade, when the freedom consists in abolishing 
 laws of the first kind, is an evident gain. It releases in- 
 dustry from shackles by which it had been unwisely con- 
 fined, which retard its progress, and limit its success, 
 while the direct benefit is outweighed by no attendant 
 evils. But whenever the freedom is opposed to laws of 
 the fourth and last kind, the moral conditions are reversed. 
 Used in this wider sense, free trade must be no gain, but 
 a loss. It becomes a delusive watchword, under which 
 moral opposites are confounded together. It would serve 
 really to erect lawless anarchy of commercial selfishness 
 into the canonized standard of private trade and public 
 legislation among Christian men. 
 
 It may tend, perhaps, to clearness of expression to 
 define the object of Political Economy to be the production 
 and increase of material wealth alone. But a science so 
 
150 MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 defined is limited and imperfect by its definition. In the 
 words of *Mr Senior, it is not warranted to offer a syllable 
 of advice on questions of private or national duty, till it 
 has borrowed information from other sources than its own. 
 It must be a fatal error to promote conclusions, drawn 
 from such limited premises, and directed to a purely 
 secondary aim, into grand, fundamental laws of social 
 legislation. It is an important boon that commerce should 
 be set free from all selfish, unwise, and needless restric- 
 tions. But when, under this plea, a broad indefinite claim 
 is set up, that it should be exempted from restraints and 
 regulations of every kind, the doctrine becomes at once 
 immoral and absurd. Once let the cold, hard, iron selfish- 
 ness of trade, which disowns the obligations of Divine law, 
 and even the softening instincts of human affection and 
 tenderness, be made supreme in the intercourse of life, 
 and an idol of the worst and meanest kind will have been 
 set up, in the abused name of Economical Science, for 
 universal worship. 
 
 But Political Economy is further linked with moral 
 elements in the closest way, because it depends on personal 
 prudence and moral conditions for the success and con- 
 tinuance of that industry which is the only source of. 
 private and public wealth. 
 
 And first, the moral character and state of the working 
 classes is one of the most vital elements, on which the 
 progress or decline of national industry must ever depend. 
 Let us compare two communities, in one of which the 
 workmen and labourers are sober, industrious, honest, and 
 another in which they are drunken, idle, fraudulent and 
 profligate, and the contrast in their social progress and 
 comfort must be extreme. The words of ancient wisdom 
 are true to the present hour, after all the discoveries of 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 15 r 
 
 modern science : " The soul of the sluggard desireth, and 
 hath nothing." "The drunkard and the glutton shall come 
 to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." 
 The moral and spiritual state of the industrial classes has 
 a most direct and powerful influence, for good or evil, on the 
 whole system of trade, and on the progress or decline of 
 national wealth and greatness. Laziness, intemperance, 
 feverish discontent, and lawless violence, are equally fatal to 
 the healthy development of national industry. These evils, 
 when they abound, take off the chariot-wheels of trade, so 
 that it drags heavily and laboriously along, and are the 
 symptoms of some great catastrophe near at hand. And 
 hence it has been justly observed by Dr Chalmers, in 
 the preface to his treatise of Political Economy : " Vary 
 its devices and expedients as it may, it can never secure 
 its object apart from a virtuous and educated peasantry. 
 Even for the economic well-being of a people, their moral 
 and religious education is the first and greatest object of 
 national policy. While this is neglected, government will 
 only flounder from one delusive shift and expedient to 
 another, under the double misfortune of being held 
 responsible for the prosperity of the land, and yet of 
 finding this to be an element hopelessly beyond its 
 control." 
 
 But the truth, which applies to the moral condition of 
 the working classes, belongs equally to the character of 
 the tradesmen and farmers by whom they are employed. 
 If these are honest, truthful, liberal and kind, the in- 
 flence in the promotion of national industry will be 
 speedily felt. Confidence breeds confidence, kindness in 
 the master or employer produces, as a general rule, 
 attachment and fidelity in the workman or the servant. 
 The wheels of commerce then move on freely, and with- 
 
152 MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 out friction. But if the employers of labour are close- 
 fisted, heartless, or even deceitful and dishonest, industry 
 will be depressed and deadened into dull and lazy 
 inaction, and the way will be prepared, when know- 
 ledge without faith has spread more widely among the 
 people, for some sudden outburst of revolutionary violence. 
 
 When we pass upward, from the middle classes to 
 the most wealthy, the importance of the moral element 
 to the economic well-being of society is no less apparent. 
 If rich men are kind, generous, sympathizing and boun- 
 tiful, the unequal distribution of the gifts of Providence 
 ceases to be a perpetual source of heart-burning and 
 sullen discontent. Society then becomes the counterpart 
 of that land of promise, where the hills and mountains re- 
 ceive abundantly the rains of heaven, but only to dispense 
 them in refreshing streams to the well-watered valleys 
 below. But let them once become, as a class, miserly 
 capitalists in one generation, alternating with luxurious, 
 profligate spendthrifts in the next, and the probable 
 result, before long, will be an amount of sullen and morose 
 discontent, accumulating from year to year, before which 
 the foundations of the social system may at last give way, 
 and wealth and industry be buried in the common ruin. 
 
 But besides the indirect dependence of national wealth 
 on social morality, through the higher or lower standard 
 of industry and prudence which the community and its 
 various classes of workers have attained, there is a further 
 connection of a still more direct and intimate nature. 
 
 Moral Science, from its very definition, extends its 
 claim to the whole range of human action, speech and 
 thought. It does not rest content with a partial service, 
 the church or the closet alone. It follows men into the 
 street, the market, the warehouse, and the field, and 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 53 
 
 claims to guide and control their actions in all the various 
 relations of commerce, industry and social life. 
 
 The words of the Apostle, " None of us liveth to him- 
 self," if viewed as the assertion of a universal fact, would 
 be wholly untrue. But interpreted as a moral precept, 
 they proclaim a law of universal obligation. They apply 
 to the pursuits of trade and commerce, as well as to every 
 other field of human activity. Purely selfish bargaining 
 is in no case lawful for Christian men. To buy in the 
 cheapest market, and sell in the dearest, may be a maxim 
 of wide range in commercial transactions. But there are 
 certain moral limitations it is bound to obey. When these 
 are neglected or denied, it becomes immoral and mis- 
 chievous. It would canonize the hideous principle that, in 
 the affairs of trade, they were at liberty to put to sleep 
 every higher instinct of humanity, and to be guided by 
 the promptings of pure and absolute selfishness alone. 
 The maxim, "caveat emptor", may embody the results of 
 a large experience. But its full and perfect development 
 must require a world of devils. Its traders would be men 
 whom the fear of discovery alone deters from the grossest 
 frauds, and who have the balances of deceit perpetually in 
 their hands. 
 
 The reasonings of political economists often rest on a 
 secret assumption, that men, in all relations of worldly 
 business, are actually guided, and may lawfully be 
 guided, by self-interest alone. Now, even as a statement 
 of facts, the simplification is excessive and untrue. But 
 when accepted as the ideal basis of a science, it becomes 
 an outrage on the simplest lessons of true morality. On 
 such a foundation of universal selfishness a perfect 
 industrial state can never possibly be reared. For the 
 purely selfish in aim can never be far-sighted. The nearer 
 
154 MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 present, the seeming immediate gain, will eclipse from 
 their view the loss which is sure to attend, soon or late, on 
 dishonesty, violence, and oppression. But shortsighted 
 selfishness is fatal and ruinous in trade and commerce, 
 no less than in the higher fields of politics and religious 
 faith. Its grapes are grapes of gall, and their clusters are 
 bitter. For credit, that is, faith between man and man, 
 is the life and soul of commerce. But when selfishness 
 reigns, and sits enthroned on the altar of perverted 
 science, the atmosphere of the whole world of commerce 
 becomes mephitic and stifling. Frauds will multiply and 
 increase without limit, and credit will grow sickly, and 
 soon expire. 
 
 But we have not yet exhausted the lines of thought, 
 which prove the close and vital union between Morals 
 and Political Economy. It may be traced further and 
 deeper still. The truths to which we are led by 
 further search will prove the imperfect and provisional 
 character of many conclusions, which modern writers 
 on Political Economy are accustomed to invest with a 
 character to which they have no just claim, not as the 
 results of an imperfect hypothesis and a rude approxima- 
 tion, but as absolute and undoubted truths of a perfect 
 science. 
 
 I have reasoned hitherto on the assumption that wealth 
 can be defined, wholly apart from every moral element, 
 and that moral truths are needful only for its right use 
 and application. But the admission, made for the sake of 
 argument, has no real foundation in truth. True Wealth, 
 by the very origin of the name, is not wholly distinct 
 from "welfare," but involves the same idea, embodied 
 and transformed. It consists really in the outward means 
 of welfare, when possessed and employed by those who 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 55 
 
 have the wisdom to use them aright. The word " goods " 
 has a like derivation, and points to the same lesson. 
 Things are not goods by virtue of a process of manufacture 
 alone, but because they are applied, or may be applied, 
 to promote the real good of those who own them. 
 The right application of the products of industry is the 
 secret condition, too often overlooked, on which their 
 character as wealth really depends. 
 
 The idea of value lies at the foundation of Political 
 Economy, just as the conception of space is the basis of 
 geometry. And yet the definition of value has been one 
 chief perplexity of writers on the science. One eminent 
 writer confounds it with cost, and has thus involved 
 his whole treatise in hopeless perplexity and confusion. 
 Many identify it with market price. Another, in a sepa- 
 rate treatise on the subject, denies it any fixed meaning, 
 and looks upon it as a mere term of relation, in which one 
 article rises and another falls, but no absolute measure is 
 possible. Mr. Mill boldly affirms that nothing remains for 
 any future writer to clear up, and that " the theory of the 
 subject is complete." It may be affirmed, with more 
 truth, that its first elements are hardly laid, because the 
 main principle on which a true understanding of it 
 depends is overlooked or forgotten. 
 
 The source of these perplexities is not hard to discover. 
 It arises from a persistent effort to separate the body of 
 wealth, its outward and familiar form, price in the market, 
 or a sum of money, by which anything may be purchased, 
 from its soul, without which it ceases to be wealth, 
 and becomes a worthless corpse, a glut of unused, or an 
 excess of abused commodities. That soul of wealth, without 
 which things are things only, and not goods in the proper 
 sense, is their real application to some end, which is bene- 
 
156 MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 ficial to the owners. When this condition is not fulfilled, 
 wealth ceases to be wealth, having nothing to do with 
 human welfare, but becomes either waste or poison. 
 
 The whole of economical science may be said to 
 depend on two or three fundamental equations, which 
 are the moving forces in the whole system of trade. 
 Cost, increased by a first profit, is the market value. 
 Market value, increased by a second or third profit, is the 
 worth, or value in use. But cost may be either real or 
 imaginary. There is the same contrast of true and 
 imaginary worth. The mechanism of trade depends on 
 the cost and worth, as defined by the mere fancy, often the 
 erring fancy, of the producer and consumer. But the 
 benefits of trade depend on a comparison of the real 
 cost and the real worth, and of these alone. The great 
 and all-important contrast between a cost and a worth 
 which are real, and one which rests on erring and mis- 
 taken impressions only, is the principle on the recognition 
 of which it depends whether Political Economy shall be 
 a moral or an immoral science. 
 
 Mr Mill, for instance, lays dow r n the principle that 
 "Political Economy has nothing to do with the com- 
 parative estimate of uses in the judgment of a philosopher 
 or moralist. The use of a thing, in Political Economy, 
 means its capacity to satisfy a desire or serve a purpose." 
 Here the fundamental defect comes clearly into view. 
 The object of Political Economy, as thus defined, is to 
 multiply the production of things desired, however vicious, 
 hurtful, and even ruinous, the indulgence of those desires 
 may be. If men are swine, its object is to provide more 
 husks and refuse for the troughs in which they feed. 
 If they degenerate into devils in malice and hatred, it is 
 to multiply the desired engines of mutual destruction. 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 57 
 
 But a science thus defined, and violently severed from all 
 consideration of right and wrong, of the true welfare of 
 man, or hurtful delusions that work his greatest harm, can 
 be no science of human action. It may amass materials, 
 from painful and humbling experience, to teach what fools, 
 misers, and profligates are likely to do. But it renounces 
 the attempt at such an estimate of the wise and just 
 objects of human pursuit, and of the right use of the 
 ample materials for happiness the God of nature has 
 spread around us, as can alone form the basis of a 
 genuine science, and fit mankind to exercise wisely their 
 sacred trust of ownership over this lower world. 
 
 Etymology is often a guide to truth, when it is over- 
 looked by those who are busied in framing some artificial 
 theory. The term now in question is an instance of this 
 kind. Value has a double relation to weight and health. 
 It denotes, first, what anything avails in the sober esti- 
 mate of sound reason, when it weighs men, actions, and 
 things in an even scale, and rates the last according to 
 their real worth, or power to promote man's solid and 
 lasting welfare. And it implies, further, a quality in 
 outward objects, akin to health in the human body, which 
 fits them for the discharge of some useful and healthy 
 function in the complex economy of human life. And 
 no Political Economy can advance human happiness, or 
 escape from the risk of nursing mischievous delusions, 
 w T hich does not accept the teaching of a nobler science 
 than its own, and draw a wide contrast between sub- 
 stance, which has weight, and shadow mistaken for 
 substance ; between objects which satisfy the desires of 
 health, and those which minister chiefly to the rest- 
 less cravings of indolence, miserly greed, destructive 
 profligacy, and all the varieties of moral disease. 
 
158 MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The vast importance of the truths here advanced, and 
 neglected or disowned by many writers on economical 
 science, has received, and is receiving at this hour, a 
 striking illustration from the course of modern history. 
 
 Since the days of Adam Smith, the founder or reviver 
 of Political Economy in its modern form, there have been 
 two successive stages in the history of its progress and 
 effects. The first stage seems nearly completed. The 
 second, its converse, has only just begun. 
 
 In the first stage, which owes its development to many 
 distinguished writers, there has been much acute and 
 sagacious, and also not a little fallacious reasoning, on the 
 tendencies of trade, and the laws of the production and 
 distribution of wealth, so far as determined by motives 
 of pure commercial self-interest alone. The science, on 
 this view, is one neither of mere practical observation, 
 and inferences, a posteriori, from the observed facts of trade 
 and agriculture, nor yet of moral duties, and what course 
 men, in the commerce of life, ought to pursue. It is a 
 hypothetical science of the tendencies of trade, assuming 
 self-interest, which has doubtless a very wide range, to be 
 the only motive in ceaseless operation. Such a study of 
 the tendencies of commercial self-interest, whether sinking 
 into hard, cold, shortsighted selfishness, or rising into that 
 moral prudence and discretion which is one of the main 
 Christian virtues, may be highly useful, if honestly 
 pursued, and kept within its own proper bounds. But in 
 this case, speaking generally, a double mistake was made. 
 To render the inquiry definite, like those of geometry, 
 moral elements were thrust out of sight, and the 
 question whether things had real value, or were only 
 conceived to be valuable through error and ignorance, was 
 ruled to be entirely beyond the range of the new science* 
 
MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 1 59 
 
 And still it was forgotten that this exclusion thrust it 
 down to a position almost servile. It became a theory 
 of the tendencies of commercial selfishness alone, and was 
 guilty of plain usurpation, when it affected to lay down 
 imperative rules for private conduct or national legislation. 
 And next, the inquiry into tendencies themselves was 
 warped and distorted by this confusion of thought. There 
 was a constant disposition to idealize that self-interest, 
 which was accepted for the supreme law of trade, to 
 purge it from the scum of those grosser forms of selfish- 
 ness, with which it is always largely combined in actual 
 experience ; and to leave out of sight those two mighty 
 sources of unknown disturbance, the selfishness of the rich 
 and covetous, when capital accumulates, and the rival 
 selfishness of discontented multitudes, when the contrasts 
 of society widen into a chasm, bridged over by no instincts 
 of humanity, and by no common hope of a nobler life to 
 come. 
 
 That selfish school of Political Economy, which dates 
 from Adam Smith, and is really a Hypothetical Science of 
 the tendencies and laws of commercial and productive self- 
 interest, seemed to prosper greatly in its first stage. Trade 
 was gradually set free from many hurtful restraints, some of 
 them possibly useful in former days, but grown antiquated 
 and worthless, and therefore mischievous, and others, even 
 in their origin, due to some form of blind selfishness or 
 jealousy alone. The new discoveries of the steam engine, 
 the steamboat and the railroad, and the opening out of 
 the vast hidden treasures of force in our coal measures, 
 concurred in the mighty change. There was an immense 
 increase of productive power. Labour was partly dis- 
 placed, but still more stimulated and quickened, by a vast 
 variety of mechanical inventions and discoveries. It was 
 
l6o MORAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 an era of growing capital. Our national wealth and 
 resources were greatly increased. But side by side with 
 this gain was the dark shadow of a great and growing evil. 
 Along with the growth of wealth there was a growing 
 inequality in its distribution. Acquired wealth, under an 
 accepted rule and law of pure selfishness, and when 
 capital is worshipped as the chief good of a nation, has 
 increasing power to beat down the price of labour, and 
 secure the main share of its fruits ; until a rival power, 
 still more dangerous, the brute force of myriads and 
 millions, banded by common discontent, and ready to 
 look upon all the wealthier classes as cruel and worthies? 
 oppressors, arises to struggle for the mastery, and to 
 transfer the sceptre of trade to other hands. 
 
 That second stage in the history and development of 
 a selfish commercial philosophy has now set in. It would 
 have visited us long ago, if the defects of the new science 
 had not been counteracted by a large amount of Christian 
 charity and kindness, softening the hard rigour of the 
 economists by lessons of a deeper and holier kind. The 
 factory laws, and other kindred efforts, proved that spurious 
 lessons of a maimed, imperfect science had not wholly 
 paralyzed the national conscience, and destroyed the in- 
 stincts of humanity. But, in spite of many things which 
 have delayed its advent, the later stage has arrived, and 
 a reaction, long seen to be inevitable by thoughtful minds, 
 has begun. A new name, the proletariat, has been invented 
 for the working classes, and represents the widespread 
 impression among them, that they have been used by the 
 selfishness of wealth as mere machines for the production 
 of riches, and hardly been regarded as fellow-men and 
 fellow-Christians. By the spread of a cheap literature, 
 and the means of rapid locomotion, their opportunities for 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. l6l 
 
 combining together have been greatly increased. The 
 separation of remote towns and provinces has been re- 
 placed by one of another kind, the sharp contrast of classes, 
 differing in social level. Trades' unions, national and in- 
 ternational societies of working men, have been formed on 
 a wide scale. Strikes, concerted by their leaders, and 
 carried out with a military discipline, and under the terror 
 of punishment little short of death, have become of yearly 
 and almost hourly occurrence. Communism in theory, or 
 a total denial of the right of property, has spread widely, 
 and fascinates tens of thousands with the hope of an entire 
 social revolution. The selfishness of capital, in the ascend- 
 ant for two generations, and almost consecrated into the 
 chief of virtues by modern system-builders, is now en- 
 countered and confronted by a force still more terrible, the 
 organised discontent and self-will of the most numerous 
 classes, on whose willing labour the whole system of trade 
 and commerce hourly depends. From the operation of 
 these new forces our great metropolis has had a narrow 
 escape from the double danger of midnight darkness and 
 winter starvation. In one word, Political Economy, in 
 the hands of many of its chief writers, has committed the 
 fatal mistake of affecting to be independent of all moral 
 truths, and still to constitute a double guide for personal 
 conduct and for national legislation. " The greatest happi- 
 ness of the greatest number " has been its professed aim, 
 and "the greatest discontent of the greatest number " 
 would almost seem, from the present signs of the times, 
 to have been the result actually achieved. 
 
 What, then, is the remedy for this social crisis, which 
 threatens to replace one great evil by another still more 
 perilous, and perplexes both monarchs and republics, at 
 the present hour, with the fear of disastrous change ? The 
 
 B. L. 11 
 
1 62 MORALS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 efforts of many hearts and minds, the unfolding of many 
 high truths, the culture of many Christian virtues, are all 
 required for this hard task. But one main duty is plain. 
 We must "moralize" Economical Science. We must 
 relegate the science which has usually borne that name 
 to its true, but subordinate place, as a science of tendencies^ 
 not of duties ; an hypothetical, not an actual science, be- 
 cause it deals with the working of one class of motives 
 only, and those neither the highest nor the best, those 
 of self-interest and money-making alone. Side by side 
 with Natural Chrematics, which has usurped the higher 
 title of Political Economy, we must create and develop a 
 higher science of Moral Chrematics, or the laws of social 
 duty, by which man is bound both to God and his fellow- 
 men in the right use, social adaptation, and religious con- 
 secration, of all outward and visible things. It is not 
 universal free trade, least of all its freedom from moral re- 
 straints, but universal uprightness, integrity, and brotherly 
 kindness, in trade, labour, commerce, and all social relations, 
 which is the true and effectual remedy for these threatening 
 evils. The whole system of trade, the manifold treasures 
 which human skill and industry derive from their parent 
 earth, when once they break loose from the great law of 
 love, may soon lose themselves in outer darkness. But when 
 they learn to submit reverently to this higher law, they 
 revolve harmoniously in their own orbit, and are bathed 
 in a light and beauty which shines on them from above. 
 And the first lessons and definitions of a Political Economy, 
 thus reclaimed to its true dignity, and placed on firm and 
 moral foundations, may be found in four sentences of the 
 Divine law, which form a climax of heavenly wisdom : 
 "Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work." "A 
 man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 163 
 
 he possesseth." "If ye have not been faithful in the un- 
 righteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the 
 true riches?" " Charge them that are rich in this world, 
 that they be not highminded, nor trust in the uncertainty 
 of riches, but in the living God, who giveth richly all 
 things to enjoy : that they be rich in good works, ready 
 to give, glad to distribute, laying up in store a good foun- 
 dation for time to come, that they may attain eternal life." 
 
 11—2 
 
LECTUKE VIII. 
 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 The intimate connection between Ethical and Political 
 Science has been generally recognized from the time of 
 Aristotle down to the present day. But it is not very 
 easy to attain a clear view of the exact nature of the 
 fundamental relation which exists between them. The 
 path of truth and wisdom seems to lie between opposite 
 bye-ways of shortsighted, prudential selfishness, and of mere 
 Utopian theories, and it is only too easy to wander from it 
 on either side. 
 
 In every field of human thought, which aims at the 
 guidance of practice, truths and facts, science and experi- 
 ence, a priori and a posteriori elements, are two factors 
 which need to be combined, and seen in their mutual 
 harmony. This is eminently true in Political Science. 
 It cannot receive a safe and full development, unless we 
 recognize the authority of great ethical truths, or at least 
 the guiding and controlling power of deep moral instincts, 
 side by side with the cultivation of practical statesman- 
 ship, and of those lessons of a wise expediency, by which 
 the laws and customs of every nation are adjusted to the 
 varying wants and altered circumstances of society from 
 age to age. 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 165 
 
 There are thus two opposite dangers to be avoided 
 in tracing out, practically, the relation between public 
 legislation and the principles of moral science. Nations 
 and their rulers are liable, on the one side, to be wrecked 
 on the Scylla of some impracticable theory, mistaken for 
 a moral law of binding and eternal obligation. Or else, 
 in shunning this danger, they may be sucked into the 
 Charybdis of an expediency, devoid of all social principle 
 or religious faith, in which nations float blindly at the 
 mercy of the winds and the waves. Principles, laid 
 down without warrant as fundamental laws of political 
 duty, may encroach on the just and proper range of 
 social expediency. The firmness and stedfastness of 
 moral truth, in its own nature, is then transferred to 
 social customs, national laws, and political constitutions, 
 and a diseased fancy clothes them with that immutability, 
 which is really a Divine prerogative. Out of this error 
 there naturally grows up a superstitious and blind con- 
 servatism, which forgets the true saying of Bacon, that 
 Time is the great innovator, worships the dead forms of 
 the past, and overlooks the fact that national life implies 
 growth and change, and that altered conditions impose 
 new duties on each successive age. The other evil, often 
 caused by recoil from the first, is perhaps wider and 
 deeper still. It is when mere expediency encroaches on 
 higher ground, where fixed principles and laws of social 
 and religious duty should reign supreme. All national 
 sense of moral right and wrong, the sacredness of 
 treaties and covenants, the axioms of public duty and 
 religious faith, are then flung aside, and the place left 
 vacant by their removal is filled up by a blind sub- 
 servience to the momentary impulses of popular self-will. 
 The true standard of excellence is forsaken and reversed, 
 
1 66 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 which was laid down by a heathen poet for the guidance 
 of the upright statesman : — 
 
 Virtus, repulsae nescia sordidae, in- 
 contaminatis fulget honoribus ; 
 Nee sumit aut ponit secures 
 Arbitrio popularis aurae. 
 
 Such a diseased liberalism, which neglects every higher 
 and deeper law of national duty, and flatters and obeys 
 the momentary impulses of public opinion, that fluctuate 
 from hour to hour, is inconsistent with all political stabi- 
 lity. It thrives in an atmosphere of excessive and ceaseless 
 change, and builds on the loose sand, which the last tide- 
 wave of the ocean may have heaped on the shore. To 
 shun these opposite errors on the right hand and the left 
 is the hardest and highest triumph of true political wisdom. 
 
 Moral Science, when rightly pursued and clearly at- 
 tained, reveals those fixed laws of duty towards God and 
 men, which are binding at all times and in all places, not 
 only on individuals, but on communities and nations. 
 They are the first elements and dominant truths in a vast 
 scheme of moral government, which is in ceaseless opera- 
 tion. They are the stars of the moral firmament. They 
 live, in the words of Sophocles, "not only yesterday and 
 to-day, but evermore, and no one knows any hour when 
 they first were born." Whenever these are trangressed, 
 however strong may be the temptation, and however 
 plausible the excuses by which men or nations try to con- 
 ceal their shame, the penalty is sure, and the stars, in 
 their eternal courses, fight against the transgressors. 
 
 But laws and customs, however firm their moral basis, 
 need to be adapted to the wants of successive ages, and of 
 the various tribes and races of the human family. The 
 general duty requires to be embodied in special details, 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 167 
 
 for practical use in the affairs of life. And these details 
 of social law and usage are mutable in their own nature. 
 They may and ought to be "changed according to the 
 diversities of countries, times and manners." And true 
 wisdom, both in laws civil and ecclesiastical, consists 
 mainly in the avoidance of "two extremes, too much 
 stiffness in refusing, and too much easiness in admitting " 
 the variations by which they are fully adapted to the 
 actual state and wants of human society. 
 
 Now there is a moral superstition, often very mis- 
 chievous in its results, which confounds the secondary 
 and derivative laws with those primary lessons and 
 principles of good and evil, of right and wrong, on which 
 they are secretly founded. The error, in political thought, 
 bears a close resemblance to the doctrine of transubstantia- 
 tion in theology. The outward sign and visible clothing 
 of moral truth is confused with the truth itself, till the 
 form is blindly worshipped, and the substance obscured 
 and lost. The natural result is some form of political 
 idolatry. But the nature of the idol may vary from time 
 to time. Sometimes it is an antiquated and worn-out 
 usage, sometimes a particular flag, or family, or some worth- 
 less pretender to a throne, long ago forfeited by human 
 guilt and folly, when the just sentence has been sealed by 
 Divine Providence through successive generations. 
 
 To see clearly, then, the true relation between Ethics 
 and Politics, the first essential is a firm hold on the con- 
 trast between Pure and Applied Morality. The great 
 truths, which appeal directly to the heart and spirit and 
 conscience of man, have to be distinguished from their 
 application, in detail, to all the varying forms and condi- 
 tions of social life. 
 
 The laws of truth, love, righteousness, and grace are 
 
1 68 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 of absolute and universal authority. They belong alike 
 to all moral agents — to men, to angels, and to unknown 
 races, distinct from both, if such there be ; and to men in 
 every age of the world, of every race and tribe, and under 
 all the varieties of political constitution or social change. 
 But their application, in social jurisprudence and outward 
 law, admits of large varieties. It depends partly on 
 experience of what men have been and are, and of their 
 actual state in moral capability, progress, and attainment, 
 and not simply on what they ought to be. Laws, that 
 would be admirably suited to a state of high moral 
 feeling and advanced intelligence, may be wholly un- 
 suitable among a race of savages, and in a state of social 
 barbarism and abounding passion. They may then even 
 become mischievous, and only aggravate the evils they 
 attempt to restrain or cure. 
 
 Quid vanas sine moribus 
 Leges proficiunt? 
 
 This first contrast lies thus at the basis of all wise and 
 wholesome legislation. Pure Morals are fixed, absolute, 
 invariable. There can be no curvature whatever in a 
 straight line. But Applied Morals, in their own nature, 
 and by virtue of their definition, are largely variable. For 
 they include all those social conditions, as elements in 
 their wise adjustment, which themselves vary widely, 
 from country to country, and from age to age. 
 
 But there is a further contrast, more liable to be over- 
 looked, which is also highly important, and even vital to a 
 just and comprehensive view of the whole subject. Posi- 
 tive Law or Applied Morals has two different aspects, one 
 human, and the other divine. And these are distinct in 
 their aim, and involve important differences in their 
 practical development. 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 1 69 
 
 The object of outward laws, in their human aspect, is 
 merely the repression of vice and crime, so far as they tend 
 to injure or destroy the life, comfort, and social welfare of 
 men. Its leading and denning character, then, is to be 
 restrictive of evil. 
 
 The Divine aspect of Law goes further. It includes, 
 indeed, this first and more immediate object, the repression 
 of open crime. But it has a wider and deeper range, and 
 includes, as one main end, the discovery of evil, with a 
 view to its more perfect abatement and cure. It enters 
 " that the offence may abound." It is not simply a power 
 and force to restrain evil. It is detective also. It does 
 not confine its aim to the security of life and property for 
 the moment, but reaches after the higher object of moral 
 renovation. 
 
 Human laws themselves, when guided by true wisdom, 
 as soon as the first end is secured, should pass on to the 
 higher. The first endeavour must be the repression of 
 outward vice and crime, in those forms which strike 
 directly at the peace and comfort, and even the existence 
 of society. The second and higher is the awakening of 
 conscience from its slumber, and the creation and culture 
 of a higher moral standard. In this way laws themselves 
 may become one powerful means of moral education. 
 
 Positive Laws, when divinely revealed, may deal more 
 largely with the higher and nobler object. Their seeming 
 failure, when viewed only as expedients to hinder the 
 growth of open crime, may be really the fulfilment of a 
 higher object of God's moral government. The discoveries 
 of human evil, which through successive ages they have 
 not overcome, but rather have placed in a clear and full 
 relief on the page of history, may prove the best prepara- 
 tion for more effectual displays of the Divine goodness, 
 
I 70 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 and of redeeming love. But such laws, when only of 
 human origin, must be content with a more limited aim. 
 They cannot, indeed, without serious evil, entirely set 
 aside the higher object. But it needs to be cautiously 
 and temperately pursued. It is a half truth, though it 
 is only a half truth, that you cannot make men moral by 
 acts of parliament. Human laws should be in advance, 
 but can only with safety be a little in advance, of public 
 morality. Else, in attempting too much, there will be 
 serious risk, almost the certainty, of entire failure. In- 
 stead of producing habits of virtue, they will then breed 
 a plentiful crop of mischievous and odious hypocrisy. 
 
 Legislation, then, to be practically perfect, requires a 
 real accommodation of human laws to the actual moral 
 attainments of society, while still avoiding with care any 
 sanction of immorality. Like the law of Moses, but on 
 a still more extensive scale, it must surfer some things, 
 without inflicting penalties, because of moral blindness 
 or hardness among the multitudes for whose good it pro- 
 vides. And hence the true principle by which it should 
 be guided is neither moral despotism, nor moral indif- 
 ferentism, extremes which tend to generate each other; 
 but Toleration, or the public recognition of a contrast 
 between what the law condemns and punishes, and what 
 the lawgiver fully approves. It is a watchword, which 
 bigotry may dislike, and charge with moral weakness, and 
 which may be resented as an insult by the pride of lawless 
 self- wall; but no other principle, in a world like ours, can 
 satisfy the imperative claims of high-toned morality and 
 true political wisdom. 
 
 A third main element, essential to a just view of the 
 intimate connection between Morals and Political Science, 
 is a clear apprehension of those Formative Principles, on 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. i*ji 
 
 which the right and wise establishment of every system 
 of positive law must depend. 
 
 Political Law deals with men under three distinct, but 
 closely related characters, as Men, as Children, and as 
 Brethren. Hence in all social law there will be found to 
 co-exist three main and vital elements, — Humanity, Piety, 
 and Brotherhood. Or, in other words, to bring the truth 
 into closer relation with a favourite modern watchword, 
 with which it agrees in part, and partly disagrees, its 
 three principles are Liberty, Inequality, and Fraternity. 
 Neglect of any one of these is mischievous. Its deliberate 
 and entire reversal, whenever seriously attempted in the 
 social constitution, must be fatal and ruinous. 
 
 The first of these essential principles of wise legislation 
 is that of Humanity or Liberty. Men, in order to be the 
 fit subjects of social law, must be free moral agents. The 
 freedom thus affirmed is no contradiction of that unhappy 
 bondage to habits of sin, which Scripture and experience 
 alike reveal as a mournful and widespread disease. On 
 the contrary, it is the condition without which moral 
 health and moral sickness are both impossible. Bondage 
 of such a kind is the disease of agents, morally free, and 
 is possible to these alone. 
 
 Laws, then, being designed for men as free moral 
 agents, must deal with them according to their true 
 character. If they are treated as mere things, chattels 
 of a master, or mere tools for the manufacture of goods, 
 whether this be done in the name of political absolutism, 
 commercial selfishness, or a fatalistic and material philo- 
 sophy, morality is quenched, the hearth of human affection 
 is left cold and desolate, and social life must expire and 
 die away. 
 
 The evil, to which this great principle is opposed, may 
 
172 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 assume at least three different forms. In philosophy it 
 reveals itself in that cold and barren fatalism, which would 
 resolve the heart, mind, and conscience of man into a 
 transcendental product of solar force ; and pretends to 
 believe that our feelings of right and wrong are bound 
 hand and foot in the toils of some vast dynamical theorem, 
 which awaits the birth of a competent intelligence in one 
 of its own countless variables, for its own complete integra- 
 tion. In politics, the same evil appears in the two different 
 forms of mere absolutism, when all rights of subjects are 
 displaced by the caprice of a supreme despot; or of caste 
 absolutism, when a claim to lifelong service is perverted 
 into a denial of all the rights of humanity, and instead 
 of servants, more honourable than mere hirelings, who 
 honour their masters, and receive from them what is just 
 and equal, we have selfish oppression on one side, and on 
 the other a race of degraded helots and slaves. The same 
 evil reappears even under the outward show of extreme 
 liberty, when men and children are treated by their fellows 
 as mere tools and instruments of production, and all their 
 higher characters are lost sight of and forgotten. A 
 third form of the same evil is found in hasty over-legis- 
 lation, when human lawgivers attempt a task beyond 
 their power, and in the pursuit of some political object, 
 or in the mistaken assertion of their own authority, bind 
 down the social life of the nation with burdens hard to 
 be borne, which experience proves to be intolerable, and 
 which, when long continued, lead to discontent and social 
 revolution. 
 
 This first principle, then, of Humanity or Liberty, 
 prescribes a .threefold law for the guidance of all social 
 thought and action, and of all wise legislation. First, in 
 doctrine, the clear assertion and firm maintenance of 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. I 73 
 
 human responsibility, in contrast to the immoral voices of 
 a material philosophy, and even to those subtle physio- 
 logical excuses for crime, which forget that all wrong 
 doing, when traced deep enough, must be real insanity 
 and madness in the sight of perfect wisdom. Next, in 
 the national constitution, the same principle points to 
 power limited by law, or the settled order of constitutional 
 government, in contrast to the despotism either of lawless 
 multitudes, or of some solitary tyrant. And lastly, in 
 practical politics, the same truth points to the duty of 
 large toleration and forbearance. It will lead statesmen 
 to remember the limitations of their own power, and to 
 avoid the serious risk of over-legislation. They will feel 
 it not only lawful and expedient, but even one primary 
 obligation of their high office, to leave wide scope for 
 human freedom, without which life becomes mechanism, 
 and society degenerates into a herd of slaves. 
 
 The second formative principle, on which the moral 
 character of human legislation depends, and by which it 
 ought to be controlled, is Piety, in the primitive and classic 
 meaning of the word, which includes reverence to human 
 superiors, and especially to parents, as well as towards 
 God and the unseen world. It is the principle, in other 
 words, of Inequality or Subordination. 
 
 Men, by the very constitution of their twofold nature, 
 are born unequal. The opposite statement, however 
 widely current in modern times, is either a strange 
 misnomer, or a prodigious fable. Each child of man is 
 first a child, and only much later becomes a parent. A 
 contrast, wide and deep, between experience and in- 
 experience, authority and subjection, manly strength and 
 infant weakness, is inwrought into the constitution of 
 human nature, and reveals itself anew in every successive 
 
I 74 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 generation. There is no strict .equality even among the 
 hosts of heaven. There are angels that excel in strength, 
 the rulers of celestial hierarchies, thrones, dominions, 
 principalities and powers, dimly and mysteriously revealed. 
 Far less can such equality be found among men. It 
 has no place, still lower in the scale of being, among 
 the animal creation and the vegetable world. We must 
 stoop lower still, to the first elements out of which lifeless 
 objects are composed, and there alone, if anywhere in 
 creation, equality must be found. The atoms of chemistry 
 are unequal, from hydrogen to gold. Comets and asteroids, 
 satellites, planets, and suns, the hyssop and the cedar-tree, 
 the insect and the elephant, reveal the law of inequality 
 in the natural world. And it extends still further, and 
 mounts higher, in the contrast between the newborn 
 infant, the strength of manhood, and the wisdom of age ; 
 between the drunkard and the savage, and saints, and 
 prophets and apostles, the lights of the Church in every 
 age. It is thus one all-pervading law of the natural, the 
 intellectual, and the moral universe. 
 
 Order is heaven's first law, and, this confessed, 
 Some are, some must be, greater than the rest. 
 
 Strict and absolute equality would unmake the 
 universe, and resolve all its wonderful beauty and 
 endless variety into a chaos of warring atoms and a sea 
 of nebulous mist once more. 
 
 This law of order, which underlies the whole world of 
 political life, and binds it to the great doctrines of ethical 
 science, assumes the double form of social and religious 
 piety. It involves, in its manifold and weighty lessons, 
 the subjection and obedience of children to their parents, 
 the reverence of the young to their elders, the sub- 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. I 75 
 
 ordination, in loving union, of woman to man, and the 
 dominion exercised over the floating, variable, and incon- 
 stant wishes of a people by fixed and abiding laws of 
 national life. Its higher form is seen in the dependence 
 of the whole community on the will and word of the 
 Supreme Creator. And the two great evils by which the 
 principle is disowned, and political science is disjoined and 
 severed from moral truth, are social insubordination and 
 national irreligion. The first of these evils is sometimes 
 a penalty, which follows upon the second. When religious 
 faith declines, and its sanctions lose their power, there 
 follows, naturally and inevitably, a relaxation of those 
 bonds which form the cohesion of society, and bind it 
 together. The warning description of the prophet is then 
 fulfilled. The child behaves itself proudly against the 
 ancient, and the base against the honourable. 
 
 The third moral principle, which is inwrought into the 
 whole texture of human society, and prescribes a law to 
 the form and course of wise national legislation, is that of 
 Brotherhood or Fraternity. 
 
 Men are born children, but they grow up to be 
 brethren. The brotherhood of a common nature, of 
 common wants, rights, and duties, of capacities for moral 
 progress, and dim yearnings after some higher happiness 
 still unattained, exists side by side with all the in- 
 equalities of age, sex, talent, wealth, social position, 
 intellectual gifts, and moral attainments. 
 
 This grand truth of man's universal brotherhood 
 limits and guards the other maxim of inequality and sub- 
 ordination, and hinders it from lapsing into a serious 
 error. The two principles, like polar forces in the natural 
 world, balance, and in balancing strengthen each other. 
 The p3asant, the workman, the pauper, the newborn 
 
I 76 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 infant, is a brother or sister to the wisest philosopher, 
 the most gifted poet, the most absolute sovereign ; and to 
 those who are higher than mere philosophers, poets, and 
 kings, to those prophets and apostles, who in moral 
 dignity and honour are highest and noblest among men, 
 who stand in the presence of the Lord of the earth, and 
 convey His messages with authority to their fellow-men. 
 And this brotherhood has its rights, which cannot be 
 violated without guilt and danger, and must form one 
 main guiding law in the whole course of wise legislation. 
 
 The evils in political life, which contradict this great 
 law of social brotherhood, are many and various. First in 
 order is the selfish pride of rulers and governors, when 
 they look upon their office as a means for personal 
 aggrandisement, whether in the grosser form of wealth and 
 opulence, or the more subtle shape of ambition and 
 historic fame ; instead of seeing in it a sacred trust, to be 
 used for the benefit of their fellow-men. This evil reveals 
 itself outwardly in the form of caste legislation, or the 
 tendency to confine the main benefits and privileges of 
 the social system to a favoured minority alone. The 
 second, near akin to the first, consists in the pride and 
 exclusiveness of social distinctions. The lesson of order 
 and gradation is thus exaggerated, till it hides from view 
 the common dignity of our human nature, and the further 
 claim of affinity and brotherhood. A third evil is the degra- 
 dation of woman. The recoil is easy, from the lessons or 
 customs of a high-flown chivalry, which treats woman, in 
 terms, with a fond and blind idolatry, and sets aside the 
 truth of her subordination, so clearly revealed, to a refined, 
 but debasing sensuality; and then, as the moral darkness in- 
 creases, to a coarse, ungenerous and heartless abuse of men's 
 superior power, till the object of idolatrous enthusiasm 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. IJJ 
 
 to the knights of romance, or a sentimental philosophy, is 
 turned once more, as in savage tribes, into a victim and a 
 slave. A fourth evil, akin to the last, is the oppression of 
 childhood. Some painful forms of this evil were too fre- 
 quent among ourselves, till they were checked by wise and 
 Christian legislation. Others, it is to be feared, survive 
 still to the present day. When idle and drunken parents 
 indulge their own vices through the hard earnings of their 
 young and almost infant children, a blight must have 
 passed over some of the sweetest and holiest instincts of 
 our nature. The aggravated guilt is too likely to be 
 followed, in later years, by the opposite and not less hate- 
 ful evil of childish lawlessness and disobedience, till the 
 springs of family life and love are poisoned and destroyed. 
 
 The last and crowning denial of human brotherhood is 
 that of direct slavery. Only it should be well observed 
 that the definition of slavery, which brings it under this 
 just sentence, is not a legal obligation, on the part of one 
 man to another, of lifelong service. It is the treatment of 
 man by his fellow man as a mere thing, and not a person, 
 a tool for producing wealth, and not as a moral agent, 
 sharing the same nature with himself, and forming a true 
 part of the wide and sacred brotherhood of mankind. 
 
 These great principles, on which the connection 
 between Ethics proper and Political Science seems really 
 to depend, involve a large variety of weighty practical 
 lessons. We may apply them, in succession, to the duties 
 of subjects, of magistrates, and legislators; and, rising still 
 higher, of those who attempt to frame or remould that 
 constitution in any state or kingdom, which may decide 
 and determine the whole course of future legislation for 
 ages to come. 
 
 The first duty, then, of subjects, which flows directly 
 B.L. 12 
 
178 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 from the first of these truths, is to be freemen indeed. 
 They are to be subject, not to lawless caprice, under 
 whatever titles of honour or sacred names it may be 
 disguised, but to law and just authority alone. This is 
 their birthright, and they cannot without guilt and shame 
 barter it away. This truth is the living root of all con- 
 stitutional government, in contrast to political or eccle- 
 siastical slavery, the mere despotism of Pope or Emperor, 
 of tyrant or priest. No man, whatever his rank, spiritual 
 or political, has the right to claim absolute, unlimited 
 obedience from his fellow-men. Those religious orders, 
 which lay down such a rule for their members, may gain 
 an effective organization, so powerful as to make them 
 dangerous to their enemies. But they purchase it by 
 sacrificing Christianity itself, and stifling the voice of 
 natural conscience. He who consents to be the slave of 
 a superior or a priest ceases thereby to be a freeman of 
 Christ. And the evil is nearly the same in abject sub- 
 mission to political tyranny. By such a blind subser- 
 viency the cause of order gains nothing. It rather incurs 
 a serious loss. Doctrines like those of the Leviathan, with 
 the corresponding practice of political servility, form the 
 natural prelude to those fierce and bloody revolutions, in 
 which all the foundations of social order are overthrown 
 and swept away. 
 
 But if the first duty of Christian subjects is to be 
 freemen, who bear in mind the dignity of human nature, 
 not destroyed, though obscured, by human sin and guilt, 
 and which constitutes the very basis of human society — 
 their next is to be men of order, or law-honouring, and 
 law-abiding freemen. They are bound to render to lawful 
 government, and all the authorities placed over them, no 
 reluctant and enforced submission, but a willing and 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. I 79 
 
 cheerful obedience. The outward acts of submission 
 are due to Caesar, and may be enforced by Caesar's law. 
 But the free and cheerful spirit in which their obedience 
 should be rendered lies beyond the range of Caesar's 
 power to enforce and secure. It is a debt which is due to 
 that higher Power, by whom kings reign, and princes 
 decree justice. Only they who obey human laws in this 
 temper fulfil the nobler and more sacred duty which they 
 owe to their Maker, and "render unto God the things 
 which are God's." 
 
 But these two principles of order and liberty, con- 
 trasted yet harmonious, do not exhaust the moral ele- 
 ments which enter into the wide range of the political 
 duty of every citizen in his public life. From the truth 
 of human fraternity or brotherhood a third main duty 
 must follow. They ought to be men of kindness. Their 
 moral obligation, as members of society, cannot be satis- 
 fied by obedience to the mere letter of human laws, how- 
 ever undeviating and complete that obedience may be. 
 There are other and deeper laws of brotherhood, which 
 find no place in human statute-books, and would flee 
 away, like the delicate colours of the rainbow, if hard- 
 headed lawyers strove to draught them in legal phrase- 
 ology, and embody them in some supplement to a 
 human code. But though unwritten, they are of real 
 and binding obligation. In the Divine law two or 
 three cases are written down as specimens of the rest. 
 "Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go 
 astray, and hide thyself from them ; thou shalt in any 
 case bring them again to thy brother. Thou shalt not see 
 thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide 
 thyself from them; thou shalt surely help him to lift 
 them up again." But this law of brotherly kindness is 
 
 12—2 
 
l8o MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 too wide in its range, and too pervasive in its fragrance, to 
 be fully expressed in any code of written obligations. 
 Whenever such attempts are made, that fragrance exhales 
 and begins to pass away. It finds its development in a 
 thousand instincts of high-souled chivalry, and in count- 
 less amenities and courtesies of social life. And whenever 
 it is ennobled and purified by the higher lessons of Chris- 
 tian faith, it raises human intercourse from the mere 
 mechanism of law, or the drudgery of mere workers in«a 
 vast hive of industry, into a lively pledge and earnest of 
 all the sacred fellowship which Christianity assures to the 
 faithful in a happier and holier life to come. 
 
 These same principles, which involve the chief laws 
 of moral duty binding on subjects in their political and 
 social life, apply no less to magistrates and lawgivers 
 themselves. They ought so to legislate, that these truths 
 may be embodied in the whole course and tenour of their 
 legislation. And this will lead them to avoid three main 
 evils, which it is the task of true political wisdom to resist 
 and put away. 
 
 The first of these is over-legislation, with its natural 
 and inevitable tendency to legal tyranny. To meddle 
 with social intercourse at every point is not the task of 
 wise human legislation. Such a prerogative belongs to 
 Divine enactments and the deeper laws of moral duty 
 alone. But in the laws of men a wide scope must and 
 ought to be given to human freedom. The true limits 
 may be hard to define. Mr. Mill's treatise on Liberty, 
 while it contains much that is true and important, lays 
 down the principle too broadly on the other side. It 
 assumes that personal convictions, if sincere, absolve from 
 all right of social restraint, not only on the opinions 
 themselves, but on the social acts to which they lead. 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. l8l 
 
 And it justifies this view by an appeal to many instances 
 of social persecution, which, even when most mischievous, 
 have been honest and sincere. But it is plain that the 
 rights of individuals on one side, and of society on the 
 other, depend on the real truth, and not on false opi- 
 nions which either may entertain. The problem is too 
 hard and vast to be solved by general aphorisms, investing 
 either individual conscience, or human society as a whole, 
 with a factitious supremacy, to which truth and liberty 
 are sacrificed on either side. So much, however, seems 
 to be practically clear that, in an age like our own, over- 
 legislation must be more than usually dangerous, and that 
 many evils should be wisely tolerated, so far as direct 
 legislation is concerned, lest attempted remedies should 
 be worse than the disease. But whenever special forms 
 of selfishness or vice are proved to work extensive social 
 mischief, and the public mind is prepared for some deci- 
 sive action, it is dangerous, on the other side, in obedience 
 to any abstract theory of personal rights, to neglect the 
 just use of authority for the restraint of evil. It is a most 
 unwise antithesis when it has been said that to " England 
 sober" we should prefer " England free," as if the spread 
 of national drunkenness were not, in its own nature, 
 adverse and fatal to the only freedom which deserves the 
 name. 
 
 The second evil, against which these principles ought 
 to be a moral safeguard, is that of blind, selfish, and 
 democratic levelling. 
 
 Human equality, unless the phrase be so limited as to 
 become wholly unmeaning, is a great and evident false- 
 hood. Legislation, whenever it is based on such a prin- 
 ciple, must be a building of sand. Whenever it deals with 
 men as mere units, and leaves out of sight the deep con- 
 
1 82 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 trasts and immense varieties of human life, it tends rapidly 
 to political chaos and confusion. For our very conception 
 of chaos is that of a state in which countless atoms 
 
 Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands 
 Of Barca or Cyrene's desert shore, 
 
 but fight only under their party colours, and have no law 
 of mutual cohesion, no gradation of life and dignity, but 
 decide their quarrels, ever renewed, by shifting numbers 
 alone. Wherever such a policy is pursued, the instinct of 
 order, violently repressed during the chase after an im- 
 possible ideal, is sure to break out in some new and 
 unexpected form.. Plebiscites of mere floating political 
 atoms, in which every law of social and moral order is 
 cast aside, and number alone is supreme, swiftly breed 
 despotic rule as the natural and almost necessary antidote 
 for a worse evil. Plato's genealogy of the forms of govern- 
 ment is then fulfilled. The nation, which drinks deep of 
 licence under the name of liberty, falls speedily under the 
 yoke of some skilful and prosperous tyrant. 
 
 A third and last evil on the part of rulers, from which 
 these great moral principles of humanity, piety, and frater- 
 nity should be a constant safeguard, is the more subtle, 
 but hardly less dangerous fault, of class legislation. This 
 fights plainly against the great law of human brotherhood. 
 When the interest and welfare of large classes of men are 
 systematically set aside, or even carelessly overlooked and 
 forgotten, because legislators are selfish, and abuse the 
 power vested in their hands, there is sure, soon or 
 late, to be a dangerous recoil. Their sin is great in 
 abusing a sacred trust, and it will be sure to find them 
 out. They are bound, as legislators, to consult impartially 
 for the general good, and the omission of any class from 
 
MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 1 83 
 
 their study for the common welfare is a serious wrong: 
 It is true that they are bound to consult for all, not as 
 mere abstract units, or apart from all the distinctions of 
 sex, age, knowledge, character, on which the constitution 
 of society depends; but for all alike in their true place, 
 and according to that weight which they may justly claim 
 in the political organism, and in God's wide plan of uni- 
 versal providence. All men are not equal, far from it. 
 But all are equally brethren. The rights of brotherhood 
 belong to all, from the least to the greatest, and cannot in 
 any one case be safely or lawfully set aside. All are free 
 agents, and ought therefore to be treated as moral beings, 
 and in no case as animal machines alone. All are im- 
 mortal, to whom the present life is probation for another 
 life soon to follow ; and are to be treated with honour, as 
 called, by Divine invitation, to partake in the Christian 
 hope of that better life to come. 
 
 The same principles apply to the still higher duty of 
 those who aspire to frame national constitutions, or to 
 determine the fundamental laws and guiding maxims on 
 which the whole course and tone of national legislation 
 is to depend. When great moral truths are forgotten, and 
 politics degenerate into a mere strife of party, or a series 
 of spasmodic efforts to combine discordant elements into 
 momentary union, and thus to secure at any price the 
 majorities on which power and influence depend, political 
 life must suffer a rapid and sure decline. But I forbear to 
 enter on a subject so wide, which suggests to thoughtful 
 observers grave and anxious reflections on the future of 
 our own country. One thing is sure, as the pillars of 
 heaven and earth. It is not the abundance of private 
 wealth, nor the largeness of the national revenue, which 
 can secure the lasting happiness and welfare of an empire 
 
184 MORALS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 like our own. Our national safety depends on deeper 
 causes, and the true talisman of our lasting prosperity and 
 greatness is of a higher kind. It consists in the supremacy 
 of justice, mercy, and faith in the public counsels of the 
 land ; and in the mingled and harmonious culture of the 
 great laws of freedom, order, and brotherhood, sustained 
 and quickened by faith in men's immortality, among the 
 dwellers in countless homes of domestic purity, peace, and 
 love. 
 
LECTUBE IX. 
 
 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 The relation between Moral Philosophy and the Christian 
 Faith, a subject highly important at all times, has acquired 
 new interest in the present day. It has a most intimate 
 connection with nearly all those great philosophical and 
 religious questions, which, in an age of peculiar intellectual 
 activity, occupy the thoughts, and divide the judgment of 
 educated men. Very opposite views have been zealously 
 advocated in former days, and are still maintained. There 
 are Christians of earnest faith, who conceive that all study 
 of Ethics, as a purely human science, whether based on 
 moral intuitions, or on calculations of far-seeing prudence, 
 is set aside and rendered superfluous by the fact of a 
 Divine revelation. All moral speculations, depending on 
 experience and natural reason alone, seem to them nothing 
 better than feeble tapers lighted at noonday. 
 
 The exact converse of this view is held by disciples of 
 the idealist school of sceptical philosophy. The clearness 
 and certainty of Ethics, as a science of pure reason, seems 
 to them so complete and self-sufficing as to dispense 
 with all need for supernatural revelation. A religious 
 creed, designed for a moral purpose, and still dependent 
 inseparably on historical records, and needing external 
 
1 86 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 confirmation from alleged miracles and prophecies, must 
 therefore, on their principles, be only a useless incum- 
 brance of an ethical system otherwise complete, by which 
 its scientific character is disguised and obscured. It must 
 be little better, in their eyes, than an improbable fiction, 
 an unmeaning superfluity. 
 
 Such a view of Moral Science is the basis of Tindal's 
 once famous work, Christianity as old as Creation. It 
 has been unfolded, in his own peculiar style, by Immanuel 
 Kant in his essay on Religion within the bound of Pure 
 Reason. It has been more lately expounded, in a popular 
 style, with zeal and eloquence, by Theodore Parker, in his 
 Discourses on Absolute Religion. It is warmly espoused 
 in a recent work on Intuitive Morals, and has plainly 
 found, at the present hour, a wide acceptance among 
 persons of general culture and intelligence, who retain a 
 vague and loose profession of Christian faith. They look 
 upon Christianity as simply the republication of a code of 
 moral duty which had been taught mankind by the light 
 of reason alone. To this extent they will freely allow that 
 it may have, in a practical sense, some real worth and 
 value. But as soon as it attempts to travel beyond this 
 limit, and to set up any claim of a higher kind, to pro- 
 claim mysterious doctrines, or remove the veil from the 
 unseen world, they deny its authority altogether. It then 
 lies open, in their opinion, to the serious charge that it 
 encumbers a pure and lofty science with Jewish supersti- 
 tions and prejudices, histories of doubtful and uncertain 
 truth, a multitude of worthless ceremonies, and dogmas 
 morally useless and hopelessly obscure. 
 
 This view of Tindal and other kindred writers was 
 prominently recalled to notice a few years ago, in the 
 sixth of the Essays and Reviews, which discussed at some 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 187 
 
 length * The Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 
 1688—1750." A real effort to throw light on the difficul- 
 ties of the subject would have been a most valuable gift 
 to thoughtful and perplexed inquirers into the nature and 
 claims of Christianity. But of such an effort there is no 
 shadow of a trace. The aim seems rather to be, in a 
 series of hasty criticisms and rapid historical sketches, to 
 render the mists which easily gather around a difficult 
 subject still more dense and impenetrable, and the dark- 
 ness deeper than before. The only conclusion drawn, 
 when a dozen theories have been discredited and set aside, 
 is that no Christian in our days, it is highly probable, has 
 any clear perception on what ground his faith ought really 
 to rest. The historical kaleidoscope is lightly shaken, and 
 a dozen diverging opinions are made to pass before the 
 eye in swift succession, but the youthful reader receives 
 not the slightest help to guide or assist his own judgment. 
 Such a purely literary and curious treatment of the 
 gravest questions of moral duty and religious faith is one 
 of the most worthless and mischievous of occupations. 
 Moral indecision and religious uncertainty are weeds 
 which grow rapidly enough of their own accord, and have 
 no need of any artificial culture, by such negative and pur- 
 poseless criticisms, to secure an ample and luxurious deve- 
 lopment in superficial minds. My own aim will be the 
 exact reverse, to unfold on this subject some clear and 
 definite principles, which may serve as waymarks to earnest 
 minds, impatient of mere literary trifling in grave moral 
 questions, who long to feel beneath them a firm founda- 
 tion of solid truth, on which their faith and conscience, in 
 harmony with enlightened reason, may safely rest. 
 
 There are three mistaken views of the relation between 
 Moral Science and Divine Revelation, which must first of 
 
1 88 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 all be set aside, before any approach can be made to a just 
 solution of the great problem we are now to consider. 
 
 The first of these is the opinion, not unusual with a 
 large number of devout Christians, that Revelation ex- 
 cludes Ethics as a Science, and renders all reasoning on 
 questions of morals needless and presumptuous. The 
 saying of Omar, in the doubtful tradition of Abulphara- 
 gius, has found its exact counterpart in some modern 
 reasonings of Christian men. "If these writings of the 
 Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and 
 need not be preserved. If they disagree, they are perni- 
 cious, and ought to be destroyed." But such a view, 
 though its advocates may intend, in advocating it, to do 
 honour to the Bible, is one which the Scriptures them- 
 selves set aside and condemn. They give no warrant 
 whatever for that blind, superstitious faith, which, in order 
 to establish its own supremacy, and reign without a rival, 
 begins by stifling the voice of natural conscience, and 
 seeks to condemn it to utter silence. 
 
 The very first page of Scripture contains a clear pro- 
 clamation of the moral gifts and faculties of mankind. 
 For man, we are there told, was created at first "in the 
 image of God." Whatever else the words imply, they 
 evidently include the affirmation of those moral capacities, 
 and of that spiritual nature, by which man resembles his 
 Divine Creator, the Holy One who is a Spirit, and is 
 thus widely parted from the beasts of the field. The same 
 truth reappears in another form in the severe expos- 
 tulation by the prophet: "Woe to them that call evil 
 good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and 
 light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet 
 for bitter." And still later, in the New Testament, our 
 Lord himself, the supreme authority with every Christian, 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 1 89 
 
 makes an appeal to his adversaries on this very ground — 
 "Yea, and why even of your own selves judge ye not that 
 which is right ?" The presence of a moral faculty in man, 
 which can judge, and ought to judge, even with respect to 
 the character of a heaven-sent messenger, and the moral 
 features of a message claiming to be Divine, is thus affirmed 
 from the opening to the close of the Christian revelation. 
 
 Again, the Scriptures teach that there is a standard 
 of right and wrong, not wholly inaccessible to mankind, 
 and morally binding on them, even apart from messages 
 supernaturally revealed. The Gentiles, as St Paul plainly 
 teaches, were " a law unto themselves," although they had 
 no law, in the sense of a Divine code, like that of Moses, 
 externally revealed. And, a thousand years before, the 
 same truth had been proclaimed by the Psalmist in his 
 simple and sublime description of the testimony of the 
 heavens, — " Their line is gone out into all the world, and 
 their words unto the ends of the earth." The doctrine 
 which denies the moral nature of man is a vain and 
 fruitless attempt to silence these heavenly voices. Their 
 calm and solemn accents never cease, though they may 
 fall too often on dull and heedless ears. 
 
 The Scriptures teach us also, with equal clearness, that 
 morals are a progressive science. For although, as in 
 physical science, the truths themselves are permanent, and 
 do not change, their range is vast and boundless, and there 
 is growth in the knowledge and apprehension of them by 
 individual minds. All the terms which we use habitually, 
 to describe the most real knowledge of sensible objects, 
 are transferred everywhere in the word of God to this 
 higher field. It speaks with high praise of those who 
 make constant advance in a pursuit so high and excellent, 
 and thus "by reason of use have their senses exercised 
 
190 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 to discern good and evil." And a similar analogy, from 
 outward light, and the faculty of vision, is used in the 
 Sermon on the Mount to describe the effect of moral 
 singleness of aim in giving clearness to the understanding, 
 and firmness and consistency to the moral judgment. "If 
 thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." 
 The communication of fresh gifts and higher privileges 
 is described, by .the same Divine authority, as mysteriously 
 linked with the right use and improvement of those 
 already received. " To him that hath shall be given, and 
 he shall have more abundance ; but from him that hath 
 not shall be taken away even that he hath." 
 
 The principle is also clearly recognized, that moral 
 truths, apprehended by a moral faculty, are one main and 
 essential part of the evidence of a Divine revelation. By 
 this means alone can its reception be fully distinguished 
 from mere credulity and blind superstition. There is an 
 abundant appeal, it is true, to evidence of a lower and 
 more sensible kind. But even here the presence of a 
 moral element is implied. The miracles of Christ were 
 themselves works of mercy, and parables of Divine grace ; 
 and the prophecies, to which appeal is made, are described 
 with emphasis as the words of holy men, who spake under 
 the impulse of the Holy Spirit of God. But in other 
 cases this moral element in the testimony stands alone, 
 and appears in fuller relief. " Which of you convinceth 
 me of sin ? and if I say the truth, why do ye not believe 
 me?" And the Apostle, treading in the steps of his 
 Divine Master, describes the main object of his own 
 preaching in those impressive words, — " By manifestation 
 of the truth commending ourselves to every man's con- 
 science in the sight of- God." 
 
 Christian Faith, then, by the testimony of the Scrip- 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 191 
 
 tures themselves, does not exclude all moral science, or 
 supersede natural conscience, but recognizes its reality, 
 and the duties which flow from it, in the plainest terms. 
 But an opposite error, still more dangerous, must equally 
 be cleared away, before any just view of the whole subject 
 can be attained. For Moral Science, whether under the 
 earlier title of a " Christianity as old as creation," or the 
 modern name of "Absolute Religion," has been held to ex- 
 clude all need for supernatural revelation, such as Christi- 
 anity plainly claims to be, and to make it superfluous and 
 unmeaning. By the help of this maxim men have been 
 invited to rise "from the transient shows of time to the per- 
 manent substance of religion, from a worship of creeds and 
 empty belief to a worship in Spirit and in Life;" and the 
 claim is made, by this process, to have "removed the rubbish 
 of human inventions from the fair temple of Divine truth." 
 But the error of this opinion, that the perfection of 
 Moral Science, or of the absolute religion of reason, makes 
 any further and positive revelation superfluous, is shown 
 by a single thoughtful glance at the actual state of man- 
 kind. Nowhere in heathen or even in Christian lands are 
 there any signs of such abundance of moral light, of so 
 high and advanced a stage of moral attainment, as plainly 
 to show that any gift of supernatural revelation would be 
 a needless superfluity. The only reasonable objection to 
 the claims of Christianity must be of an opposite kind. 
 It may be urged, with some plausibility, that the moral 
 state of Christendom is so little raised above the level of 
 heathen countries, as to discredit the notion that the 
 gospel is a Divine message, and to countenance the view 
 that it is only one transient and imperfect phase of a 
 purely human development. But clearly the natural con- 
 clusion from such a premise can never be that all reve- 
 
192 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 lation is superfluous. It must rather be that the light 
 of Christianity itself is too limited, partial, and obscure ; 
 and that, even after eighteen centuries during which 
 its influence and teaching have widely prevailed, some 
 fuller and clearer message from heaven is still to be 
 earnestly desired, in order to scatter the still remaining 
 darkness. Now this is the exact reverse of the con- 
 clusion which Tindal and his successors have drawn, from 
 the alleged clearness and certainty of ethical truth, to 
 set aside the claim of the gospel to be a Divine message. 
 
 This dream of sceptical philosophy is disproved, not 
 only by a direct appeal to the lessons of a long and pain- 
 ful experience, but by a just perception of the higher 
 necessity and importance of moral truth, when compared 
 with the discoveries of physical science. An increase of 
 man's knowledge of the outward laws of nature is desirable, 
 both as a healthy exercise of human intelligence, and for 
 the practical results, promotive of social ease and comfort, 
 to which it leads. Still the knowledge which men require, 
 to provide for the animal necessities of life, is of an ele- 
 mentary and familiar kind, and all beyond seems almost 
 to belong to the class of social luxuries. But uprightness, 
 honesty, and truth, social kindness and good will, the re- 
 straint of selfish and angry passions, the culture, if not of 
 high and heroic excellence, at least of temperance, pru- 
 dence, and sobriety, and the domestic virtues, are almost 
 essential to the peace and welfare of society, besides their 
 connection, which reason shows to be probable, and Chris- 
 tianity proclaims on Divine authority, with the nobler 
 hopes and wider prospects of life beyond the grave. It 
 may be wise and kind in the great Author of our being 
 when man has once attained such knowledge of nature 
 as enables him to provide for the wants of his animal life, 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 193 
 
 to lay the world before him for ceaseless research, and 
 leave him to discover its laws and harmonies by his 
 own unaided efforts. But if selfishness and passion have 
 clouded the eye of the soul, and make it hard for him 
 to discern higher truths, far more vital to his present and 
 future welfare, the same wisdom must surely point to an 
 opposite course. We may well infer from the Divine 
 goodness, that help for the discovery of moral and 
 spiritual truth will be given to those who sojourn in a 
 land of twilight and shadow, so to assist their feeble efforts 
 to escape from the darkness, and to guide their feet into 
 the way of peace. 
 
 This presumption, drawn from the actual wants of 
 mankind, and the urgent need for a practical attain- 
 ment of moral insight, is confirmed when we reflect on the 
 deep and mysterious nature of these truths, which it is 
 so needful for them to know and understand. Man is 
 higher and nobler than lifeless matter. Human conscience, 
 will, and intelligence, are harder to explore than the facts 
 of physiology, and the laws and instincts of mere animal 
 life. Man, even as he now is, amidst all his follies and 
 vices, is a more difficult study than the depths of ocean 
 or the stars of the sky. But Man, as he ought to be, 
 the knowledge of his high capacities of moral growth and 
 attainment, his duties and dangers, the means and helps 
 of his progress, the noble and perfect standard he should 
 strive to attain, is a subject harder and nobler still. Now 
 this is the great subject of Moral Science. The simple 
 nature of its first elements cannot remove the vast com- 
 plexity, the unsearchable mystery, which must belong- to 
 its full development. It rises from earth, and climbs 
 towards the highest heaven. It passes beyond the bounds 
 of space and time, and reaches into eternity. It strives 
 
 B. L. 13 
 
194 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 to reach the mountain- tops of creation, and there still to 
 gaze upward on the unsearchable mysteries of eternal 
 and uncreated love. Some thoughtful minds, when they 
 look on the past and present state of the world, may 
 have doubts and misgivings, that haunt them like dark 
 spectres, whether any direct light from heaven has ever 
 dawned on mankind, or can be reasonably hoped for in 
 time to come. But surely to reject the idea of super- 
 natural revelation on the ground of the clearness of moral 
 and spiritual truth, and the perfect ease of its attainment, 
 so as to render all such help superfluous, is the worst 
 madness of human pride, a climax of unreasoning folly. 
 The grandeur, difficulty, and loftiness of moral truth, no 
 less than the greatness of the moral wants of mankind, 
 form a strong and almost irresistible presumption, that 
 those who are walking in mist and darkness may reason- 
 ably hope for some help to clearer vision from a God of 
 infinite wisdom and perfect love. 
 
 The same view is confirmed by all the analogies which 
 human parents and teachers supply in every field of 
 human thought. Men are never left to raise themselves 
 out of ignorance by their own unaided efforts. Life begins 
 with a course of education, in which the child passively 
 drinks in the lessons which are set before it by a know- 
 ledge higher than its own, and profits by all the stores 
 of truth accumulated by former generations. But moral 
 truths, which involve the duty and the destiny of man, 
 the ends for which the present life is given, and the pros- 
 pects of another life after death, are subjects in which the- 
 best and wisest of mankind, in proportion to their wisdom 
 and loftiness of thought, feel most keenly their own ignorance 
 and weakness. Their highest attainment is the spirit of 
 a little child, which feels how ignorant it is, and longs to 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 195 
 
 be taught and guided by a wisdom far beyond its own. 
 Such an instinct, in thoughtful minds, who feel how steep 
 is the ascent of the mountain-side, and still look upward, 
 is the pledge of its own fulfilment. All human teachers, 
 and the instructions given to children by their own parents, 
 are multiplied proofs, to reflecting men, that our race have 
 not been abandoned, like orphans, to their own self-taught 
 progress in moral wisdom and insight by their Father in 
 heaven. 
 
 These reasons, to disprove the strange and wild paradox 
 that revelation is rendered superfluous by the clearness and 
 self-evidence of Moral Science, are further confirmed by 
 the great fact that Christianity, on the very face of it, is 
 a remedial system. It is no message to creatures in a 
 state of moral health, who need no physician. It implies 
 and assumes, on every page, the existence of a dangerous 
 moral disease. It is feet to the lame, and recovery of sight 
 to the blind. It starts from the assumption that men's 
 faculties of moral discernment, though not destroyed, are 
 grievously impaired, and that restoration to health is 
 needful, as well as the provision of external light, before 
 healthy vision can ensue. This view, so plainly taught 
 in the divine message, is confirmed on the largest scale 
 by the past history of the world. The claim, then, that 
 men can dispense with all supernatural revelation, and 
 may safely rely upon their own unaided reason in the 
 whole field of moral inquiry, is like a suggestion that the 
 inmates of a blind asylum may easily build an obser- 
 vatory, provide it with transit instruments and telescopes, 
 with spectroscopes and heliometers, and discover all the 
 magnificent truths of modern astronomical science, without 
 the help of any teacher, oculist, or physician, by their 
 own spontaneous efforts alone. 
 
 13—2 
 
196 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 A third view of the connection between Moral Philo- 
 sophy and Christian Faith is that which enforces a policy of 
 mutual isolation. Though more usual in its application to 
 Physics, it is often extended to this higher field of thought. 
 Each subject, it holds, must be studied separately, and 
 treated in entire independence of the other. We are to 
 have "no hankering after seeming reconciliations." The 
 geologist, "if loyal to science, will marshal his facts, as 
 if there were no book of Genesis," and the interpreter of 
 Scripture " will explain its meaning, as if there were no 
 science of geology." Attempts to unfold the harmony of 
 revelation and science, even by divines of eminence, have 
 been called "restless, feverish, and sad," and condemned 
 severely, not simply for errors and faults in the execution, 
 but as if the effort, in its own nature, were a criminal and 
 mischievous folly, instead of being an intellectual neces- 
 sity with every thoughtful and reverent mind. 
 
 Such an entire separation, however, in the case of 
 morals still more than of physics, is unnatural and impos- 
 sible. It could be attained only at the price of two fearful 
 and immense evils, that religion should become immoral, 
 and moral philosophy irreligious and profane. The re- 
 mark has sometimes been made, that the different source 
 of the two subjects is enough to warrant their entire 
 separation. Human philosophy or science, it is said, de- 
 pends on experience and induction, but religious faith on 
 Divine authority alone. They ought therefore to be kept 
 entirely apart, and neither of them to be suffered to in- 
 terfere in the least with the free and full development of 
 the other. 
 
 Such expedients, however, to avert all risk of conflict 
 between revealed religion and human science and philo- 
 sophy, must be wholly unavailing. However good the 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 1 97 
 
 intention of their advocates, they fight against the fixed 
 laws of human thought, and must utterly fail. We cannot 
 believe contradictions, whatever the sources from which 
 they are derived, or however diverse the evidence or 
 authority on which each rival doctrine is supposed to rest. 
 One of three results must certainly follow. We must re- 
 nounce the alleged authority of the Divine message, or 
 deny the certainty of the supposed science, or set aside 
 the alleged contradiction, and maintain, on reasonable 
 grounds, that it is illusive and untrue. But we cannot 
 seat our theology in one lobe of the brain, and a philo- 
 sophy which flatly opposes its teaching in the other. 
 When seeming contrasts arise, we may defer the at- 
 tempt to reconcile them, believing the materials for a full 
 solution to be insufficient, and may be content to wait for 
 a day of fuller light. But the unavoidable result must be 
 either dimness and uncertainty in our faith in the Scrip- 
 tures, or some large reserve of doubt and incredulity in 
 accepting conclusions propounded to us in the name of 
 ethical philosophy or natural science. 
 
 The whole drift of thought, in modern times, is opposed 
 to the view, in politics or in science, which would find 
 safety, whether for creeds or for countries, in a kind 
 of Japanese isolation. Every where, through all the 
 various fields of human thought, the essential unity of 
 all truth is becoming more and more apparent. The 
 principle is too deeply true to be overlooked and contra- 
 dicted without loss and danger, whether by Christian be- 
 lievers or by men of science. The latter are bound to re- 
 ceive the evidence of well-attested facts, even if drawn from 
 those fountains of sacred truth which they are sometimes 
 tempted to overlook or despise. The former are bound to 
 serve God with a reasonable faith, and never, in reading 
 
198 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 those Scriptures which they believe firmly to be the word 
 of God,, to neglect the light which must be thrown on 
 their real meaning from all successful and honest study 
 of the works of nature, and from the predicted growth of 
 natural science in these latter days. 
 
 Moral Science then, if it be truly a science, must be 
 in full harmony with all genuine revelation. A Divine 
 message, on the other hand, if genuine, must be in 
 harmony with the lessons of true morality. And such 
 is really the relation in which they stand to each other. 
 They are not rivals, but friends. Christianity reinforces 
 lower and plainer truths of morality, and unveils the 
 higher, which are less attainable, and hardly accessible 
 to men's unaided reason. Ethical Science recognizes 
 the moral excellence and purity of the Christian reve- 
 lation. Whenever their harmony seems obscured, it 
 either serves directly to remove false constructions of a 
 message, so plainly worthy of a Divine origin, in all 
 its main features, or else it teaches the wisdom and 
 duty of distrusting our first impressions, when they 
 would impute, to some particular doctrine or narrative, 
 inwrought into a code so pure and lofty, moral inconsis- 
 tency and contradiction. The objections in most cases, 
 as in the noted example of Abraham's sacrifice, are due 
 only to the rashness and hastiness of superficial thought, 
 which a juster and deeper view of the genuine conclusions 
 and teaching of Moral Science would be sufficient to 
 expose and condemn, and to reveal the perfect harmony 
 of the sacred narrative with the noblest and most com- 
 prehensive maxims of true morality. 
 
 These false theories once removed, the way is open 
 for a brief survey of the true connection between genuine 
 Ethics and Christian Theology. Christianity confirms and 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 1 99 
 
 enforces the main principles of Moral Science. That 
 Science, in its turn, is a needful handmaid, which ministers 
 in various ways to a right reception of Christian faith. 
 Christianity promotes ethical culture, and supplies the 
 largest helps for progress towards the true standard of 
 moral excellence ; while Moral Philosophy, in its sys- 
 tematic study, contributes, in many different ways, to the 
 growth and full perfection of Christian Theology. 
 
 Christianity, first of all, confirms and enforces the 
 great principles of Ethical Science, because it affirms so 
 clearly the moral element in the constitution of human 
 nature. The first utterance of Scripture, when man is 
 brought on the theatre of sacred history, is to proclaim 
 that he was created in " the image of God." The words 
 are full of the deepest significance. They express the 
 wide interval, which some anatomists strive to bridge 
 over by fixing their eyes on bodily resemblances alone, 
 between all the lower animals, ami a being endowed with 
 reason and free will, capable, as a spirit, of communion 
 with the Father of spirits, and of knowing, loving, and 
 serving the Supreme Creator. This keynote, struck so 
 early, resounds through every later page of the Bible. It 
 appears once more in the New Testament, where the main 
 object of the Gospel is said to be the restoration of the lost 
 or defaced image of God to the souls of men. It is this 
 full recognition of man's moral nature, this tone of lofty 
 thought, in which he is viewed as a creature standing 
 apart and alone, made in God's image, lord of this lower 
 world, but subject to a Divine law, and placed under the 
 moral government of the righteous and holy Governor of 
 the universe, which makes the Bible, even where its special 
 doctrines, and the force and drift of its separate messages, 
 are hardly received, or scarcely known, so mighty an instru- 
 
200 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGLON. 
 
 ment, in all ages, for the moral awakening and elevalion 
 of mankind. In the light of true morality, its exclusion, 
 in a Christian land, from the outline and course of early 
 education because of the strifes and divisions of Christians 
 themselves, would be at once a folly and a crime. No 
 sadder exhibition could be made of the power of human 
 perverseness to dishonour and cast aside the most precious 
 gifts of Divine love. 
 
 Again, the Scriptures reinforce the fundamental truths 
 of Ethical Science, when they insist so strongly, in every 
 part, on the essential contrast between moral good and 
 moral evil. Human probation, in all its forms and varie- 
 ties, is made to depend on this great and fundamental 
 truth. The commands of the law, the warning voices of 
 the prophets, appeal to it continually. Man is gifted with 
 the knowledge of "good and evil." He is responsible to 
 God for this knowledge, and is bound to use it in choosing 
 good and refusing evil. Life and death are set before him, 
 and he is commanded to choose life, that he and his chil- 
 dren may live. A solemn woe is denounced on those, more 
 guilty than the robbers of some earthly inheritance, who 
 seek to remove the moral landmarks, which are the common 
 inheritance of all mankind. A severe invective is pro- 
 nounced against those who have no knowledge to do good, 
 but are wise to do evil. Our Lord himself appeals to 
 conscience as the eye of the soul, and proclaims the result 
 of its blindness through passion and vice to be the darken- 
 ing of the whole intellectual being. St Paul teaches that 
 the light of nature, shining in the outward works of God, 
 leaves men without excuse, when they yield themselves to 
 the seductions of sensual vice, and forget or deny the 
 Creator, who has stamped the signs of His own wisdom 
 and greatness on all the works of His hands. Each in- 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 201 
 
 spired Apostle, in turn, makes his appeal to this moral 
 faculty in the mind of man. * To him that knoweth to do 
 good, and doeth it not. to him it is sin." St Peter exhorts 
 the first disciples to maintain "a good conscience, that 
 those may be ashamed who falsely accuse their upright 
 conversation." St John lays down the high standard at 
 which the Christian ought to aim : " If our heart condemn 
 us not, then have we confidence before God." And St 
 Paul sums up the whole outline of moral duty in that 
 comprehensive appeal : " Whatsoever things are true, 
 whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
 whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any 
 virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." 
 
 But further, the Bible confirms and establishes the 
 foundations of Moral Science, because it teaches plainly 
 that the standard of right and wrong is no arbitrary thing, 
 which comes into being through positive appointment, or 
 some changeable act of the Divine will, but a law which is 
 true before its own revelation, and on this account has 
 been revealed. It does not fear to refer the acts of the 
 Almighty to this standard, and thus teaches that Eternal 
 Goodness is a deeper and holier attribute than even Al- 
 mighty Power or Omniscient Wisdom. Its voices by the 
 earliest patriarchs are these : "Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right?" "Shall he that hateth right govern, and 
 wilt thou condemn the Most Just?" It sets before us the 
 Supreme Creator making this appeal to His own creatures: 
 "Are not my ways equal? are not your ways unequal?" 
 It crowns the messages of the law with that most glorious 
 of all moral aphorisms with regard to the stainless perfec- 
 tion of the Divine goodness : " He is the Rock, His work 
 is perfect, all His ways are judgment ; a God of truth and 
 
202 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 without iniquity, just and right is He." And in its later 
 messages it sets before us, as the highest object of Christian 
 desire, to make trial, in our own conduct and course of life, 
 what is "the good, and perfect, and acceptable will of God." 
 Another way, in which the Scriptures confirm the 
 reality, and enforce the authority of Moral Science, is by 
 laying it down for a fixed law of Christian duty to make 
 progress continually in spiritual discernment, and in the 
 apprehension of spiritual truth. No countenance is there 
 given to the crude fancy that Ethics, viewed on their 
 practical side, are a barren and unprogressive subject of 
 thought. We rise into a purer atmosphere, where the 
 mephitic choke-damp of such depressing theories finds 
 no place, but is swept away by the fresh wind of some 
 holier influence, and the human conscience breathes freely 
 once more. The voices it utters are full of reality and 
 of hope. They encourage, while they stimulate, the 
 willing learner to climb higher and higher up the hill- 
 side of truth. " To him that hath shall be given, and he 
 shall have more abundance." " The path of the just is 
 as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto 
 the perfect day." The soul, we are taught, has senses 
 resembling those of the body, only more wonderful and 
 mysterious. And these, like their outward counterparts, 
 grow keener and finer in their perception, when rightly 
 employed, so that Christians, " by reason of use ", may 
 attain a fuller and clearer knowledge, both of good and 
 evil. Such a growth of knowledge, in the case of unreal 
 shadows, is plainly impossible. The reality of Moral 
 Science is plainly implied, when such various degrees 
 of moral discernment lie open to the attainment of the 
 sincere and humble Christian. 
 
 But the New Testament supplies a still deeper con.- 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 203 
 
 firmation of the same truth by the description which 
 it gives of the main drift and aim of its own message. 
 What is the great end, to which miracles and prophecies, 
 the ordinances of the Christian church, and all the 
 secondary features of the revelation contained in the 
 Scriptures, are subservient? What is the standard of 
 hope and desire, which its disciples are taught ever to 
 keep in view ? It is not blind submission to the decrees 
 of almighty power, or the dull, unreasoning apathy of the 
 fatalist, but the full, intelligent harmony of the created 
 will w r ith the felt and known perfection of the Divine 
 goodness. Its highest message is not couched in the 
 sentence that "God is Power," but that "God is Light" 
 and that " God is Love." It teaches us to see a moral 
 goodness, perfect and without stain, seated on the 
 throne of the universe. Towards this high and perfect 
 standard it represents it as the privilege and duty of the 
 Christian continually to aspire. And thus it leads us to 
 rise above the domain of natural sequence and mere 
 physical law, in which the ebb and flow of material changes 
 is subject to rules of quantity and direction alone ; till we 
 reach a higher region, where the intelligent will, gazing 
 on a perfect standard of Divine wisdom and love, ap- 
 proaches nearer and nearer to the glorious object on 
 which its gaze is fixed unceasingly, shines more and more 
 with some real though faint reflection of its Divine 
 beauty and glory, and sees light in the light of heaven. 
 The character of the Christian revelation is wholly mis- 
 conceived, it is true, when it is taken merely for the 
 republication of a code of morals, in which no remedk-. 
 are provided for the moral disease of mankind, and no 
 powerful helps are given, and no mighty attractions of 
 Divine grace are revealed, to replace the barren acknow- 
 
204 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 ledgment of a law perpetually transgressed by the peace 
 of forgiveness, and conscious progress towards the recovery 
 of the lost image of God. But still it is certain that 
 the aim and purpose of the gospel is the moral eleva- 
 tion and spiritual recovery of those to whom its message 
 is given. And no surer pledge could be given to us 
 of the unspeakable dignity and importance of Moral 
 Truth, when contrasted with mere physical progress, than 
 a just view of that wonderful economy of Divine grace 
 which the gospel reveals. Its final aim, as clearly an- 
 nounced by prophets and apostles, is to plant the laws 
 of duty once more in the hearts of men, so as to 
 provide an effectual remedy for the moral disease which 
 has spread so wide, and lasted so long ; and in due season 
 to establish a kingdom of purity and love, of righteous- 
 ness, peace, and joy, which may form an image and 
 reflection on earth of the moral beauty and perfection 
 of a higher and brighter world. 
 
LECTUEE X. 
 
 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 The reality and excellence of Moral Truth, viewed as a 
 science and object of human thought and study, is con- 
 firmed, and not contradicted or impaired, by Christianity. 
 But the relation of the two subjects is mutual, as well as 
 intimate, and Morality has an important office to fulfil in 
 connection with the right reception of any message which 
 claims to be Divine. 
 
 How may we discern between a true and a pretended 
 revelation ? The credentials of such a message must answer 
 to the perfections of its Author. They are Divine power, 
 far-seeing wisdom, and supreme goodness. All these 
 attributes, though perhaps in various measure, may be 
 expected to leave their impress on every oral utterance 
 or sacred writing, which really comes from God. The 
 moral evidence cannot usually stand alone. In that case 
 the reception of a heavenly gift would be made to de- 
 pend on the perfect and healthy working of a faculty, 
 grievously imperfect and diseased, which creates, by its dis- 
 ease, the need for this Divine remedy. But though moral 
 evidence alone is not enough, because of the state of those 
 to whom the message is given, it is one main element 
 in the credentials of any true revelation. Its presence is 
 essential, in order that the acceptance of the message, as 
 
206 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 really divine, may be an act of genuine faith, and not of 
 blind credulity. The unholy and impure must be quite 
 unable to pass a true moral judgment, in detail, on every 
 part of a record which, claims to be Divine. Still, if 
 it be otherwise well attested, they may be perfectly able to 
 judge whether its general tone is worthy of a message 
 from the God of heaven ; or whether, from its low tone, 
 and confused moral teaching, it is wholly unworthy to 
 be received in the high character of a genuine reve- 
 lation of His will. 
 
 Ethical Science, again, prepares the way for Christian 
 Faith, because it acts as a powerful detective to disclose 
 the moral wants of mankind. All spurious moral teaching 
 lowers and debases the standard of right and wrong, so as 
 to quiet the uneasy conscience, and bring down the rule of 
 duty to the level of the actual state and conduct of men. 
 But true morality teaches a widely different lesson. It 
 refuses to lower its standard, in order to relieve its subjects 
 from the painful consciousness of wrong-doing. If brings 
 out into clear relief the wide and deep contrast between the 
 laws of right, and the actual state and history of the world. 
 And thus it reveals on the side of science, and seals by the 
 voice of natural conscience, that lesson of the wide and 
 universal spread of moral evil among men, which forms 
 so main a feature of Scriptural Theology. It re-echoes, in 
 tones of power, those heavenly voices, which announce 
 to mankind the presence of sore disease, and their need 
 of some effectual and Divine remedy. 
 
 Again, Moral Science, when pure and genuine, includes 
 and recognizes those deep instincts of creature dependence 
 and conscious weakness, which, in a race like our own, 
 render a Divine revelation the natural object of hope 
 and earnest desire. The full soul loathes the honeycomb. 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 207 
 
 It is possible for those who have been reared amidst the 
 light of Christian teaching, and who are still averse to 
 the high and pure morality of the gospel, to turn away 
 with a cold indifference from whatever appeals to them 
 in the name of God, and claims to be Divine. The state 
 of mind which proclaims all knowledge of the Creator 
 impossible to be attained, and then proceeds, without one 
 pang of regret or sigh of bitter lamentation, to frame its 
 own theories of a universe consigned to eternal and hope- 
 less darkness, is one which finds unhappy illustrations in 
 our own day. But the moral instinct, when really awake 
 and in vigorous exercise, and moral science, when its voice 
 is truly heard, teaches a widely different lesson. Its voice 
 is that of the ancient patriarch in his hour of sorrow, 
 *' that I knew where I might find Him ! that I might 
 come even to His seat." Even in heathen lands it will 
 prompt a secret yearning of the spirits of men, to "feel 
 after the Lord, if haply they may find him." It imprints 
 on every thoughtful mind a deep conviction that content- 
 ment with entire religious ignorance and uncertainty, far 
 from being the sign and test of advancing science, is the 
 sure mark of a deep and ineffable moral degradation. 
 There are only two states of mind, which, in the light 
 of sound ethical teaching, can be safe or right in a creature 
 like man, gifted with such high powers, and still conscious 
 of their past abuse — to know and love God who has been 
 actually revealed, or to seek with earnest longing of desire 
 after the God who is still unknown. 
 
 Right and sound moral teaching, when a divine mes- 
 sage has been outwardly received, will aid in the work 
 of setting aside false interpretations, to which it must 
 always be exposed, and which tend to obscure or pervert 
 its meaning, and thus to defeat the object for which it 
 
208 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 was given. The best and noblest gifts of God are liable 
 to serious abuse, when entrusted to the keeping of sinful 
 men. The Scriptures may be wrested, as an Apostle has 
 warned us, by men of perverse mind to their own de- 
 struction. And even where the abuse is not so extreme, 
 genuine faith and piety may be mingled with no small 
 amount of superstitious ignorance or blind credulity. 
 Under the plea of reverence for the word of God, the faults 
 of good men may be mistaken for virtues, holy words may 
 be wrested from their context, and violently forced into 
 the mould of imperfect human systems, or supplemented 
 with human guesses and fancies, till their true meaning 
 is obscured or wholly forgotten. Here a genuine know- 
 ledge of ethical truth may prove an important safeguard 
 against serious dangers. It will teach men that re- 
 cords of human error and sin, even when they are found 
 in a Divine message, do not suffer a moral transformation, 
 and become examples of moral excellence ; and that 
 special duties, depending wholly on some special command 
 of God, are no laws for universal guidance. Actions, which 
 would be highly criminal, when their motive is the mere 
 caprice of self-will, or the excitement of passion or revenge, 
 may sometimes be proofs of heroic faith or earnest love, 
 when done in obedience to the express command of God, 
 to fulfil some great end of His moral government. And 
 outward and ceremonial precepts, in which the principles 
 of moral duty are mingled with details, and applied to 
 variable and transient circumstances, may be set aside by 
 the Lawgiver who appointed them, and still His wisdom 
 may be perfect alike in their earlier institution and in 
 their later abrogation. 
 
 Again, Moral Science, rightly understood, is the spouse 
 and ally of Christian Faith, because it reveals and en- 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 209 
 
 forces the supreme importance of that knowledge of 
 Divine truth, and of the character and perfections of the 
 Creator, which it is one main purpose of the gospel to 
 impart to mankind. 
 
 The doctrine, lately taught by some eminent writers, 
 that nothing can be known of God and His moral nature, 
 because He is an infinite Being, is directly opposed to 
 the whole scope and aim of the Christian revelation. Its 
 effect; whenever consistently held, must be to destroy all 
 Theology and all Ethical Science at one common blow. 
 In the hasty recoil from speculative theories of religion, 
 the rivals and substitutes of Christian faith, it would 
 plunge the world and the whole church into a gulf of 
 hopeless darkness. But the view is not more opposed to 
 the teaching of Scripture than to the voice of conscience 
 and sound reason. All truth is so closely linked together, 
 that a fatal necessity of entire ignorance in any one field of 
 thought must extend its influence, like a mist of gloom and 
 obscurity, to all the rest. If we know nothing at all on any 
 subject of which our knowledge is not exhaustive or com- 
 plete, no person or thing in the wide universe can ever 
 be really known. 
 
 Moral Science, when its truths are clearly and firmly 
 held, teaches plainly the opposite lesson. It thus becomes 
 the natural ally and handmaid of Christian faith. We 
 do not know ourselves perfectly, either in body or soul ; 
 and in this life, perhaps even in the next, we can never 
 fathom all the mysteries of our own being. Yet we know 
 that we have an inward power of choice, and are bound 
 to use it aright. A light shines down upon us, which 
 bids us seek continually a perfection not yet attained. 
 We do not know perfectly our nearest relative or dearest 
 friend. The social ideas, on which all human fellowship 
 
 B. L. 14 
 
2IO MORALS AND REVEALED RELTGLON. 
 
 is based, are mysterious and obscure. Yet we know and 
 are sure that kindness and love to all, but especially to 
 neighbours and friends, are our bounden duty and high 
 privilege. Our ignorance of the secret heart of others, and 
 of many hidden laws on which their health and comfort 
 depend, cannot set aside the great maxim of the Apostle, 
 " To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to 
 him it is sin." 
 
 The same principle must apply when we travel 
 upward in thought to a higher sphere. The greatness 
 of the Creator is unsearchable. The Infinite Being 
 transcends, and must transcend, the full comprehension 
 of every finite understanding. The voice of the ancient 
 patriarch is no recent discovery of an improved philosophy 
 in modern times : " Canst thou by searching find out God ? 
 canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" But when 
 a fatal necessity of entire and absolute nescience is inferred 
 from the mystery, which hangs around the horizon in every 
 field of human thought, and is then applied to religious 
 truth alone, the reason, conscience, and heart of man 
 protest against a conclusion no less illogical and baseless 
 than debasing and repulsive in its moral aspect. 
 
 There are many dark lines in the solar spectrum. It 
 shares this feature, though in more abundant measure 
 from its superior brightness, with flames of earthly origin 
 and inferior brilliance. Yet the spectrum is light, and 
 not darkness. These lines, though dark themselves, could 
 never have been discovered by those who were wholly 
 blind. And the same principle clearly applies to a higher 
 subject. The very power to perceive and know the mys- 
 teriousness of the Divine nature is a proof that some 
 partial knowledge is attainable. Minds which can specu- 
 late on the persistency of force in all nature amid cycles 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELLGION. 2M 
 
 of perpetual change, on the secret undulations of light, and 
 the mass and velocity of stars almost infinitely remote, have 
 certainly powers by which they can know, and ought to 
 know, their Almighty Creator, and thus to echo the voice 
 of the Psalmist : " Be sure that the Lord, He is God ; it 
 is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves." They 
 may feel, and ought to feel, the certain truth of that 
 moral axiom of the Apostle : M The invisible things of 
 Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, 
 being understood by the things that are made, even His 
 eternal Power and Godhead." And from this great fact, 
 as its fountain, another truth must naturally flow, that 
 contented ignorance of that God, in whose hand our breath 
 is, must be always and in all circumstances a grievous and 
 inexcusable folly. It is a threefold offence, against the 
 true dignity of man as a responsible creature, against the 
 bonds by which all human society is held together, and 
 against the authority, love, and kindness, of our Father 
 in heaven. 
 
 Christian Theology, in many different ways, confirms 
 and deepens the claim of moral truth on the minds and 
 consciences of men. It republishes the great facts of 
 man's moral nature, and of his responsibility to his Maker 
 and Preserver, and proclaims them anew with Divine 
 authority. By the voice of that law of holy love which 
 it. clearly reveals, it awakens the conscience from its fre- 
 quent slumber, and brings to light once more the secret cha- 
 racters once engraven there by the finger of God, but since 
 obscured, as in some palimpsest, by worldly habits and 
 selfish passions. It rescues men from that palsy of hope- 
 less despair, which is liable to seize on them, when once 
 aroused from the stupor of moral indifference, and 
 when they see how far above their actual state is the 
 
 14—2 
 
212 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 standard they ought to have fulfilled, of which the ob- 
 ligation can never cease, and feel how unable they are 
 to attain it by their own feeble efforts. By new and 
 higher motives, drawn from the revealed facts of the 
 gospel, it calls their moral faculties once more into 
 vigorous exercise, animates them with new grounds of 
 hope, and stirs the heart with a noble ambition to seek 
 for glory, honour, and immortality in the paths of humility, 
 obedience, faith, and Christian love. It provides tests, by 
 which to discover moral progress or decline, and sacred 
 landing-places in the ascent of the soul from lower to 
 higher states in the knowledge and discernment of spi- 
 ritual truth, and its practical application to the guidance 
 of the life and the culture of the heart. The beatitudes, 
 for instance, are like a ladder of moral ascent and pro- 
 gress, of which the foot rests upon the earth in the 
 confession of human weakness, but the top reaches to 
 heaven, where the soul attains to a full resemblance of 
 the Divine perfection. And besides its other characters, 
 which make it the most, powerful instrument of ethical 
 progress, it is one great excellency of the Christian revela- 
 tion, that it provides, in every part of its inspired and 
 holy messages, such large and ample materials for the 
 illustration and practical enforcement of almost every 
 variety of moral truth. 
 
 But the converse is equally true, and seems to claim 
 a fuller development, so as to remove the suspicion which 
 some Christians have entertained, that Moral Philosophy 
 in its systematic study is a dangerous rival and adversary 
 of Christian faith. Such a view, however it may be pal- 
 liated by the unbelieving tone of some ethical speculations, 
 is highly unreasonable. Its acceptance, by any number 
 of religious men, would be a dangerous stumbling-block 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 213 
 
 in the way of simple minds. For indeed Moral Philosophy, 
 when true and genuine, must be the spouse and ally of 
 Christian faith, and minister in various ways to its progress 
 and full perfection. 
 
 First of all, sound ethical teaching confirms and rati- 
 fies the grand outlines of revealed morality. It discerns 
 in them great, fundamental, unalterable truths, applicable 
 to mankind in every age, and in all the varying circum- 
 stances of human history, and worthy to be enforced anew 
 by direct messages from heaven, super naturally revealed. 
 
 It has been remarked, in a recent defence of utilitarian 
 ethics, that the morality of consequences, to be true and 
 sound, must include not only Epicurean, but many Stoic 
 as well as Christian elements. Such a statement serves 
 only to disguise the real truth. Three main elements 
 really enter into all moral questions, and ethical systems 
 are distinguished and contrasted by the way in which 
 they deal with them. The first is a law or rule of right 
 and wrong, going before ; the second, the moral faculty 
 or capacity of moral feeling and judgment, by which that 
 law is apprehended; and the third is the discernment 
 and anticipation of results that will practically follow 
 from morally right or wrong conduct. The transcend- 
 ental and ideal philosophy of modern times relies on 
 the first alone, and attempts to soar out of the region 
 of common sense and practical expediency into one of 
 absolute, inflexible reason. The old Stoic morality of 
 nature, and its modern counterpart, the ethics of con- 
 science and the moral sense, dwells exclusively on the 
 second element, or the harmony of human action with the 
 voice of personal conscience, as a faculty properly and 
 rightly supreme. The morality of consequences, whether 
 in its older selfish and Epicurean form, or modified by 
 
2 14 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 a tacit adoption of the law of universal philanthropy, 
 dwells on results alone. But Christian Morality includes 
 all three elements alike, and assigns to each its due 
 place. It exhibits, first of all, a law of essential right, 
 which it is the duty of man to learn and apprehend 
 for his own guidance. It recognizes, next, a faculty of 
 moral discernment, a conscience, the e}^ of the soul, 
 which needs to be kept single and pure, and neither 
 warped by pride nor selfishness, that the whole body 
 may be full of light. It dwells further on the truth, that 
 the consequences of actions, soon or late, must answer 
 to their moral character ; so that, by an inverse process, 
 their good or evil results will serve in most cases to il- 
 lustrate and confirm that ethical contrast on which they 
 secretly depend. Thus the genuine teaching of Moral 
 Science, and the voice of Christianity, will be found> 
 the more closely they are examined, completely to agree. 
 
 The Bible needs to adopt no foreign element, whether 
 Stoic or Epicurean, to complete its own ethical teaching. 
 It contains within itself whatever is true and sound in 
 either system, as well as in modern transcendentalism, 
 but combines their divergent and imperfect theories in a 
 higher unity of balanced and perfect truth. On the other 
 hand, while it includes the elements necessary to a com- 
 plete and harmonious system, it does not attempt to 
 exhibit them in a systematic form. And thus the genuine 
 progress of Moral Science must fulfil, towards the ethical 
 precepts of revealed religion, a double office. It will reveal 
 more and more the truth and consistency of those prin- 
 ciples which underlie the whole range of Bible morality, 
 in its high appeal to laws which are " settled in heaven," 
 its direct challenge to the human conscience, and its con- 
 stant reference to practical consequences, in life or death 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 215 
 
 in blessings and curses, that follow on well or illdoing. 
 But it will also develop those principles in other directions, 
 which do not lie within the special aim of the Christian 
 message. For as the Scripture records sunrise and sunset, 
 but does not anticipate the discoveries of Astronomical 
 Science, so its enforcement of great moral truths, and 
 of their sure consequences both in this life and the life 
 to come, leaves still a wide and ample range for the 
 reasonings and conclusions of Ethical Science, when it 
 traces out more fully the first principles themselves, and 
 applies them in fuller detail to all the countless varieties 
 of human character, and the vast and ever multiplying 
 diversities in the complex economy of human life. 
 
 Moral Science, when its first lessons are clearly ap- 
 prehended, performs another service to Christian truth. 
 It establishes, on grounds which are unassailable, the 
 mournful contrast between the true ideal standard of right 
 conduct and the actual state of mankind. And thus it 
 bears witness to that great fact, which is also the funda- 
 mental doctrine of the Gospel, that the state of men 
 is one of sin, guilt, and unholiness, of wide departure 
 from the true and inflexible standard of the good and 
 right, and therefore calls for the intervention of some 
 Divine remedy. Every form of spurious morality strives 
 to lower the standard, in order to get rid of this mystery 
 of evil, so solemn and mournful, and to reduce its own 
 requirements nearly to the level of the habitual prac- 
 tice of mankind. The lowest varieties dispense with the 
 law of duty altogether, and make prudential selfishness 
 the only rule of human conduct, subject to no other 
 penalty than the natural results of a defective calcula- 
 tion. In this way, however, not only the harmony of 
 Morals and Christian Faith is at an end, and replaced by 
 
2l6 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 direct opposition, but Ethics, as a science, having definite 
 objects and laws of its own, is wholly destroyed. It be- 
 comes a mere branch of arithmetic. Its problems retain 
 in this case no moral feature whatever. They merely 
 propose for solution certain equations of a very high 
 order, involving countless coefficients, in which not only 
 the quantity sought, but nearly all the coefficients by 
 which its value is to be determined, are equally unknown. 
 
 This harmony, however, between genuine Ethics and 
 the truths of Christianity, is not confined to the mere 
 discovery of widespread moral disease, which proves the 
 desirableness of some supernatural provision for its cure, 
 and opens the way for the disclosure of a remedial system 
 of grace and a Divine Physician. It extends further, to 
 the Incarnation, one great central doctrine of the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 There is much in the statement of the Gospel, that 
 " the Word was made flesh," and that the Supreme Creator 
 has been manifested in human flesh, to stagger the faith 
 even of devout men, and to awaken the active opposition 
 and incredulous disbelief of mankind, when we view it 
 on the side of experience or natural probabilities alone. 
 The question of Solomon — "Will God in very deed dwell 
 with men ? " presents itself here to the reflecting mind in 
 a startling and almost oppressive form. It can be no 
 matter for surprise that multitudes, not wholly incre- 
 dulous, shrink from a doctrine which involves so deep a 
 mystery, and feel an utter disproportion between the 
 littleness of man and the place of our planet in the uni- 
 verse, and the alleged union of the Divine nature with 
 our own in one historical Person, who has lived and 
 died, like a man, among his brethren of mankind. 
 
 But here the teaching of Moral Science comes to the 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 21 J 
 
 aid of Christian Faith, and throws an immense weight 
 into the same scale, when loaded so heavily with doubts 
 and objections on the opposite side. For it teaches clearly 
 two main truths, which go far to confirm the doctrine, so 
 startling at first sight, and still so clearly announced in 
 the Scriptures. First, it assures us of the doctrine, the 
 secret foundation of all genuine Ethics, that the great 
 First Cause, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, 
 is a Being possessed of all moral perfection, a God of 
 spotless holiness and perfect love. And then it assures 
 us, further, that infinite condescension must be one 
 integral and inseparable element in our conception of 
 all-perfect goodness. It is true that the forms of this 
 condescension, and the special features it may assume, 
 or the moral limits that regulate its exercise when it 
 encounters sin and evil in its objects, are too high and 
 hard a problem to be solved beforehand by the guesses 
 of human wisdom alone. Such knowledge is too wonder- 
 ful for our powers of discovery. But when revealed in 
 another way, the truth may be seen at once to harmonize 
 with the deepest and purest lessons of Ethical Science. 
 For goodness does not and cannot consist in selfish pride, 
 or in haughty isolation. True dignity does not depend on 
 empty state and outward show, but on moral excellence 
 alone. Genuine love delights in stooping to want and 
 sorrow. Supreme perfection can belong only to a Being 
 supremely gracious, and in its modes of disclosing its 
 Divine preeminence may be expected to surpass the dim 
 anticipations of our narrow minds. It is morally worthy 
 of the Most High to "have respect unto the lowly;" and 
 the starry heavens, while they reveal the glory of the 
 Maker, only add new emphasis to the moral beauty of 
 the truth, of which the Incarnation is the highest proof 
 
2T8 morals and revealed religion. 
 
 and illustration, that the Lord of all worlds is mindful, 
 with most tender love, of all the creatures of his hand. 
 
 The " unknown God " whom the Athenians ignorantly 
 worshipped, was no other than the Father of spirits, who 
 has revealed himself under the gospel in the person of 
 Jesus Christ. But "the unknowable God," which some 
 schools of modern thought offer for our acceptance under 
 that name, is widely different. A Being, of whom nothing 
 whatever can be known, who abides apart, like the gods 
 of Epicurus, in solitary isolation and inaccessible mystery, 
 never to be broken by one gleam of heavenly light, is 
 something worse than a mere negation and intellectual 
 void. If the great mystery of Christian faith overwhelms 
 and dazzles us by the bright vision it presents of an infinite 
 condescension, surpassing our largest efforts of thought to 
 conceive its greatness, this negative theology, which pre- 
 tends to replace it, is incredible for an opposite reason. 
 It offers to us a moral paradox of the most prodigious 
 kind. A Being of unlimited power, who still is unable 
 or unwilling to have communion with any finite intel- 
 ligence, who shrouds himself in a mystery never to be 
 broken by one gleam of light, and leaves the world to 
 run in one vast cycle of wearisome and perpetual change, 
 abiding in the selfishness of an eternal isolation, can be 
 no object of honour and esteem, much less of loving awe 
 and holy adoration. It is a spectral vision of darkness, 
 the moral incubus and nightmare of a deserted and deso- 
 late universe. Physical Science disclaims the doctrine as 
 an idle, inconceivable figment. But Moral Science goes 
 further, and proclaims this apotheosis of perfect and eternal 
 selfishness to be hideous and impossible. 
 
 There is, in reality, no main element of Christianity, 
 which does not find some direct support and confirmation 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 219 
 
 of its truth in the lessons of genuine Ethical Science. 
 For this discovers, in the light of a long and mournful 
 experience, the moral feebleness and impotence of man, 
 the wide extent of corrupt desire and wayward and 
 perverse action. And thus it shows the suitableness to 
 the wants of human nature of that great promise of the 
 Divine Sanctifler, the Lord and Giver of spiritual life, 
 which constitutes one main part of the Christian message. 
 It rescues the doctrine from those intellectual subtleties, 
 by which it has been overlaid and disguised in the many 
 controversies of the church, and presents it, in all its 
 Divine simplicity, as a truth in full and deep harmony 
 with the known wants of the human race, confirmed 
 .by the history of the world in every age. It cannot of 
 itself resolve the hard problem, how a Being of perfect 
 goodness and infinite condescension may be expected to 
 deal with a race so morally helpless, and even perverse, 
 as mankind in general are proved, by long experience, 
 to be. But it points our thoughts in that exact direc- 
 tion, where the sunrise dawns upon us in the gospel, 
 revealing the fact of a Divine Comforter and Sanctifler, 
 provided by the goodness of a heavenly Father for the 
 urgent moral wants and necessities of mankind. It con- 
 firms, by the voice of natural conscience, gaining fresh 
 light in proportion as it meditates more closely on the 
 laws of duty, the revealed warnings of a judgment to 
 come. It discloses further the complete harmony between 
 the deepest instincts of our moral being, when once 
 thoroughly awakened and aroused, with its dim longing 
 after a moral perfection seen in the far distance and not 
 attained, and the great and glorious hope, revealed in 
 the gospel, and assured to those who receive its message 
 aright, of a perfect and sinless life beyond the grave. As 
 
2 20 MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 
 
 in water face answers to face, so do the natural instincts 
 of the human heart respond to this voice of Divine re- 
 velation, and echo not only its warnings of future judg- 
 ment, but its hope of a higher life and purer moral 
 excellence, to be attained hereafter by all who are true 
 and upright in heart. 
 
 Once more, Moral Science vindicates the Bible from 
 a large class of objections, and helps to remove a fertile 
 source of objections to its authority, while it points out, 
 in the fact of a series of progressive revelations, a wise cor- 
 respondence with the actual wants of the human race. 
 
 Wise expediency is not the sole duty of man. It is 
 only one aspect, and neither the highest nor the noblest, 
 of Moral Truth. But it is an aspect inseparable from 
 the rest, and it claims the fullest prominence in the 
 case of legislation, whether human or divine. For the 
 main object of positive laws is to supply the want which 
 arises from the shortsightedness of men in general, and 
 their vice, perverseness, or moral weakness, by the 
 higher wisdom and foresight of the lawgiver, and his 
 freedom from the disturbing influence of mere self-interest 
 and passion. When moral laws have to be applied to 
 the varying circumstances of mankind from age to age, 
 variable elements must enter into their wise application. 
 It is thus a natural and certain corollary from the first 
 principles of moral truth, that a revelation, to be wise, 
 must be moulded, in part, by the actual state of those to 
 whom it is addressed; and that, while the principles on 
 which it is based must be firm and unchangeable as the 
 pillars of heaven, successive modifications in the outward 
 form of the message, far from obscuring and contradicting, 
 only tend to confirm and establish its Divine origin. 
 j There is no reason, then, why firm believers in Chris- 
 
MORALS AND REVEALED RELIGION. 221 
 
 tianity should look with a jealous and unfriendly eye on 
 the earnest cultivation of Ethical Science, and still less 
 why the students of that science should turn aside in 
 sceptical doubt, and with secret repugnance, from the 
 messages of Holy Scripture. The distinction between 
 Moral Philosophy and Christian Theology is important, 
 and needs ever to be kept in view. But the elements of 
 union between them are more important and vital than 
 the partial contrasts. In the nineteenth Psalm, long ago, 
 we have a Divine prophecy of their perfect reunion. All 
 the voices of nature, whether of the stars in the firmament, 
 or of natural conscience in the human heart, whenever 
 their sound goes forth to the whole world, tend to resolve 
 themselves into a still nobler utterance, and to lose them- 
 selves in a clearer and brighter light, the written word of 
 God. For this proceeds originally from the same source, 
 but, when rightly welcomed, approaches nearer and nearer 
 in its progress to the full and perfect daylight of the 
 better life to come. 
 
LECTURE XI. 
 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 Fkom the spiritual geography of Moral Science, or its 
 relation to the various branches of knowledge which com- 
 pose the great cycle of human thought, I proceed now to 
 consider separately some of those main elements on which 
 its truth and authority depend. It includes three different 
 aspects, the source and ground, when parted from each 
 other, of conflicting ethical systems, and on the union of 
 which,- in their due order and proportion, Moral Philosophy 
 must be founded, if these debates are to be reconciled in 
 a deeper harmony. The first and highest is the objective 
 aspect of Morals, which recognizes an eternal law of right 
 and wrong, prior to the perceptions of the individual con- 
 science, and independent of its errors; a lofty and inflexible 
 rule of righteousness, uncreated and everlasting, based on 
 the essential relations of moral agents to each other and 
 to their Creator, an ideal standard of perfect goodness 
 in all its forms, whose seat is the bosom of God, and 
 her voice the harmony of the world. The second is 
 the subjective aspect, which recognizes conscience as an 
 inward faculty of the soul, naturally claiming precedence 
 and supremacy over all the rest. It is this great fact, 
 which makes man " a law unto himself," bears witness to the 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 223 
 
 claims of duty, and awakens inward approval and disapproval 
 on the contemplation of virtuous or vicious actions in our- 
 selves and others. The third aspect of Morals is that which 
 unfolds the connection between right and wrong conduct, 
 good or evil actions, and the wide-spreading consequences 
 that must naturally ensue. It is the great fact which 
 forms the basis of utilitarian theories of Ethical Philo- 
 sophy. However defective and dangerous, when laborious 
 calculations of pain and pleasure are used to set aside the 
 law of God without, and the direct voice and authority 
 of conscience within, it is an element of moral reasoning 
 which can never be overlooked without serious peril on the 
 other side. A practical code, tested by experience, and 
 suited for the real conduct of life, would then be likely 
 to be displaced by 'some high-sounding and pretentious, 
 but thin, abstract, and barren theory. 
 
 Eternal and Immutable Morality is the title of a 
 well-known work of Dr Cudworth, a contemporary of Dr 
 Knightbridge, and one of the chief lights of Cambridge 
 two centuries ago. The objective certainty of moral truth 
 is there maintained with much ability and learning. But 
 the long delay of the publication, which took place forty 
 years after the author's death, when a new school of thought 
 had set in, and still more its scholastic style, have con- 
 spired to rob it of its due influence. It needs pains 
 and effort to separate its solid ore of thought from the 
 learned dust and sand in which it is almost buried. Dr 
 Whewell has remarked that " though always mentioned 
 as one of our standard works on Morals, it produces little 
 impression on most of those who view it as an ethical 
 work." One reason he assigns is that its principles are 
 not made to bear manifestly on moral questions, and are 
 too abstract and general in their form. 
 
224 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 that the chief cause for the want of any wide influence 
 is the scholastic mould into which many of the thoughts 
 are cast. Such a passage as the following, though a really 
 important and vital truth lies hid beneath its surface, 
 is not likely to secure a wide school of disciples in the 
 present day. 
 
 " It is a thing we shall easily demonstrate that moral 
 good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest, if 
 they be not mere words without any significance, cannot 
 possibly be arbitrary things, made by will without nature; 
 because it is universally true that things are what they 
 are, not by will, but by nature. As for example, things 
 are white by whiteness, and black by blackness, triangular 
 by triangularity, and round by rotundity, like by likeness, 
 and equal by equality. Neither can Omnipotence itself, 
 to speak with reverence, by mere will make a thing white 
 or black without whiteness or blackness, or by mere will 
 make a body triangular without having the nature and 
 properties of a triangle in it; nor circular without the 
 nature of a circle, that is, a circumference equidistant 
 everywhere from the centre. The reason is because all 
 these things imply a manifest contradiction, that things 
 should be what they are not." 
 
 To place the subject, if possible, in a clearer and more 
 convincing light, it may be well to consider, first, in what 
 sense moral truth must be owned to be contingent, and 
 neither immutable nor eternal ; and next, in what sense 
 these high titles of honour may be fitly applied to it, and 
 express a view of its nature, essential to its vital influence 
 and practical power over the human heart. 
 
 Now here it is needful, first of all, to distinguish three 
 main divisions of Ethical Science, the morals of desire or 
 affection, of knowledge or intelligence, and of outward 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 225 
 
 action. The first of these is the subject of Pure, the third 
 of Applied Ethics ; while the second, which deals with the 
 right conduct of the understanding in all moral subjects, 
 holds a kind of middle place, and serves to form the tran- 
 sition from pure moral truth to its outward applications. 
 
 Even Pure Ethics, or the morals of internal affection 
 and desire, involve plainly some contingent elements. 
 They assume the existence of moral agents, with their 
 power of choice, and mental attributes of will and desire. 
 No laws can be in actual force, where there are no persons 
 to whom they apply. The absolute and perfect goodness 
 of God, the secret, fountain on which all the streams of 
 moral duty depend, and from which they flow, is so 
 distinct in kind, and so mysterious, as scarcely to be in- 
 cluded in the general conception of its nature. For this, 
 requires a superior, whether some person, or only a law, 
 to which obedience is due. Now all created being is and 
 must be contingent. Hence Morals, so far as they assume 
 the existence of moral agents, bound by ethical laws, must 
 be contingent also. 
 
 Morality assumes the existence, not of the moral 
 agent alone, but also of other beings, towards whom he 
 lies under various obligations. In all social ethics the 
 objects of duty, as well as the agent himself, have only a 
 contingent and not a necessary being. And thus the 
 eternity and immutability of all moral truth of a social kind 
 must be doubly limited, from the mutable, dependent 
 nature of the subjects in whom it inheres, and of the 
 objects to whom it belongs. 
 
 In the morality of the intellect other elements of 
 contingency appear. For this class of moral duties de- 
 pends on the existence of powers and capacities in the 
 human mind, by which the good and desirable may be 
 B. L. 15 
 
2 26 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 known, and on the actual limitations in our faculties, 
 which involve the need for slow and gradual progress 
 in the acquisition of truth of every kind. It includes 
 further all the special conditions in the means available 
 for the increase of knowledge, which may vary widely, 
 according to diversities in natural gifts, or in the states 
 of society. All these elements may introduce some cor- 
 responding diversity into the actual laws and limits of 
 moral obligation. Truths, fixed in themselves, may thus 
 be elastic and contingent in their application to real life. 
 How much every one is bound to learn and know, even 
 in moral questions, will depend in part on his own natural 
 powers of thought, and in part on the variable means of 
 progress and improvement which he may have enjoyed. 
 The lesson, taught by an Apostle, clearly affirms this great 
 principle of Ethical Science, which links human duty with 
 the opportunities of knowledge previously given: "To 
 him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it 
 is sin." 
 
 In Applied Ethics the element of contingency enters 
 in still larger measure. Here diversities arise from all 
 the varieties of actual power in every moral agent. The 
 larger his own gifts, the fuller will be his responsibility. 
 All the differences which exist in the capacity of sentient 
 beings for pleasure and pain, all diverse experiences of 
 good and evil in our fellow-creatures, multiply the pos- 
 sible variations in the practical rule of right or wrong 
 action. The great law of love mounts upward, from the 
 lower animals to men, from subjects to rulers, from men 
 to angels, from creatures to God. It includes the whole 
 range of sentient being. But in every stage of ascent, 
 short of the highest, it must include many contingent 
 and visible elements, depending on the actual gifts of 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 227 
 
 our fellow-creatures, and the present constitution of the 
 world in which we live. 
 
 No universe, whether natural or moral, can subsist on 
 geometrical or necessary truths alone. Some positive law 
 seems essential to the nature of all created being. Such are 
 plainly the laws of attraction and cohesion in the outward 
 and material world. In the higher field of moral activity, 
 there need also to be positive laws of Divine appoint- 
 ment, which are not incapable, in their own nature, of 
 reversal or change. Actions may be linked with certain 
 results in a manner which all experience confirms, but 
 which we are unable to trace to any abstract or fatal 
 necessity. These laws may be of two kinds. Some of 
 them may refer to the human body, and to the construc- 
 tion of the material world. Others are mental, and refer 
 to the laws and associations of human thought. The 
 murderer, who plunges a dagger into the heart of his 
 victim, commits a hateful crime. But the essence of that 
 crime consists in the malice and hatred, which knows 
 that life is precious, and intends to destroy it. That this 
 outward act should imply deep malice depends on those 
 laws of human life which experience has revealed, and on 
 the murderer's knowledge of the preciousness of life, and 
 of the means by which it can be irreparably destroyed. 
 
 Morality, then, cannot be eternal and immutable, so 
 far as it must depend, practically, on a large variety of con- 
 tingent and variable elements. The positive laws which 
 the Creator has appointed, and which enter so largely 
 into the whole economy of human life, must have a great 
 influence on the application of ethical rules and maxims, 
 however deep and firm their foundations may be. 
 
 Still, when every needful concession has been made, 
 there is a sense, deeply important, in which we may claim 
 
 15—2 
 
2 28 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 for moral truth, in the words of Cudworth, that it is 
 eternal and immutable. Even in geometry, the most 
 fixed and certain of human sciences, we must begin by 
 assuming the existence of an outward and spatial world 
 known to us by experience. When this assumption has 
 been made, the relations of geometrical science neces- 
 sarily follow. They are discerned as necessary, and not 
 contingent, by the general consent of thoughtful and 
 educated minds. Even those philosophical heretics, who 
 strive to resolve them into arbitrary inductions of a par- 
 tial experience, capable of reversal, will usually be found, 
 in the course of their reasonings, to bear unconscious tes- 
 timony to the truth they seek to disprove. 
 
 The nature of Moral Science is, in this respect, pre- 
 cisely the same. To prove the existence of a moral world, 
 or of beings possessed of will and the power of choice, we 
 must refer back to our own consciousness, and to the 
 experience of others gradually acquired in the course of 
 life. But when this first step has been taken, the power 
 of choice and the sense of moral responsibility are found 
 to be inseparable. In strict agreement with the moral 
 faculties, as soon as their existence is recognized, thought- 
 ful minds are compelled secretly to own that there is 
 some standard of duty or transgression, of right and 
 wrong, binding in its own nature on every moral agent. 
 That standard, embodied in its simplest expression, is 
 threefold, in reference to the threefold faculties of the 
 reasonable mind. It is love in the desires and affections, 
 truth in the understanding, and energy in the will. And 
 the passions or evils which are the contrasts of these, are 
 self-condemned; in the affections, selfishness and malice ; 
 in the understanding, ignorance, error, and delusion; and 
 idleness and violence in the field of outward action. 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 229 
 
 This great truth, however simple in its own nature, 
 is capable of a large and various development. It extends 
 to an immense variety of objects through the whole 
 range of the universe of being. It includes the Creator 
 and all His creatures, angels and unseen spirits, as well 
 as the human race. It comprehends all the various and 
 complicated relations of human life; and even the lower 
 creatures, so far as they are capable of pain and pleasure, 
 cannot be exempted from the circle of its just authority. 
 It is modified by all the immense variety of sensible, 
 intellectual, and moral capacity for pain and pleasure, 
 good and evil, in those who are the objects of right or 
 wrong action from their fellows. It is further extended 
 and varied by innumerable diversities in the conditions 
 of moral influence, and by the differences and contrasts 
 of spiritual condition, which experience reveals in the 
 members of the human family, and of which dim reve- 
 lations are given us, extending beyond our own limited 
 experience to higher or more distant worlds. 
 
 The doctrine that Morals are eternal and immutalle 
 may be viewed in contrast to two main errors or false- 
 hoods, which have widely prevailed. 
 
 And first, the truths of morality are not to be looked 
 upon as if they were " by will, and not by nature," or 
 arbitrary results from some appointment of the Supreme 
 Creator. This doctrine has been held not only by phi- 
 losophers but divines, who have strangely supposed that 
 they honoured the Almighty Power of God by advancing 
 a doctrine which makes the Divine goodness a fiction 
 without meaning. The view has been maintained in two 
 different forms. The first of these assigns moral dis- 
 tinctions in the law of right and wrong to a direct, posi- 
 tive appointment of God. He might have enjoined 
 
23O ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 hatred instead of love, selfishness instead of kindness, 
 falsehood and treachery instead of truth, and on the prin- 
 ciple of these writers the obligation would equally have 
 followed. It would have been a duty r to follow in the 
 wake of the sovereign command ; so that, in their hypo- 
 thetical world, to call evil good and good evil, to put dark- 
 ness for light and light for darkness, instead of incurring a 
 solemn curse and woe, would have secured and deserved a 
 blessing. 
 
 But the same principle has been adopted and main- 
 tained, indirectly and circuitously, by some who strongly 
 denounce it in its bare and naked form. They refer all 
 right and wrong, for their immediate source, to certain 
 emotions of approval or disapproval, which rise sponta- 
 neously in the human heart. But they refer this consti- 
 tution itself to the category of positive ordinances of the 
 Supreme Creator. In this way the dependence of Morals 
 on will, and not nature, the doctrine which Cudworth 
 condemns, after being rejected in its simpler and more 
 naked aspect, reappears under a thin disguise. 
 
 This great oversight has a signal illustration in the 
 ethical lectures of Dr Brown. He condemns strongly the 
 view of some theologians, who would resolve right and 
 wrong into the one idea of obedience or disobedience to 
 the commands of God. If this view were just, he argues 
 with truth, " what excellence beyond mere power could we 
 discover in that Divine Being whom we adore as the 
 supreme goodness? If the virtue depend exclusively on 
 obedience to the command, He must have been equally 
 adorable, though nature had exhibited only appearances 
 of unceasing malevolence in its Author, and every com- 
 mand He had given to His creatures had been only to 
 add new voluntary miseries to the physical miseries which 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 23 1 
 
 already surrounded them." But in other passages he 
 looks upon the moral feelings themselves as nothing more 
 than an arbitrary and reversible constitution of the 
 human heart by the Divine Creator, and writes as 
 follows : 
 
 " Our minds have been so constituted as to have these 
 emotions, and our inquiry leads us to the provident good- 
 ness of Him by whom we were made. God, the author of 
 all our enjoyments, has willed us to be moral beings, for 
 He could not will us to be happy in the noblest sense of 
 the term without rendering us capable of practising and 
 admiring virtue." " Virtue is a felt relation to certain 
 emotions, NOTHING MORE. We speak always of what our 
 mind is formed to admire or hate, not of what it might 
 have been formed to estimate differently. The supposed 
 immutability has regard only to the existing constitution 
 of things under that Divine Being, who has formed our 
 social nature what it is ; and who, in thus forming it, may 
 be considered as marking His own approbation of that 
 virtue which we love. Such is the moderate sense of the 
 immutability of virtue for which alone we can contend." 
 
 This indirect denial of the essential character of moral 
 distinctions seems to me now, as it did forty years ago, no 
 less mischievous than when the same principle is advanced 
 in its open form. " That which defines cannot, from its 
 very nature, become a property; and thus we cannot 
 justly speak of the Divine Will as good, so long as we re- 
 gard it as constituting of itself the final standard of right 
 and wrong. But it is plain that we are brought equally 
 to such a conclusion, whether we view it as directly pro- 
 pounding itself for such a standard, or as implanting 
 feelings arbitrarily, to which it afterward refers. The 
 path leads by a longer circuit, but the issue is the same. 
 
232 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 Indeed, when searched narrowly, the difference is only 
 that a sense of deception, painful to entertain for a 
 moment, aggravates the evil of the former view. The 
 contrast is the same as between the sway of an arbitrary 
 sovereign, who should claim obedience on the sole ground 
 of his power; and one who should claim further the praise 
 of his subjects for governing with the sanction of a senate 
 of his own appointing, blindly and tamely subservient to 
 his will. Yet surely this would be a faithful emblem of 
 the Divine government, could we conceive the moral 
 emotions to be of mere arbitrary appointment, and liable 
 to be reversed at will, so that what we now condemn as 
 evil we might in such a case have been brought to praise 
 as good. From such a view the mind recoils even more 
 than from the former, and takes refuge in the expostula- 
 tion of the Psalmist : ' Shall the throne of iniquity have 
 fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law V" 
 
 Again, Morals are eternal and immutable in this 
 further sense, that they do not depend for their truth 
 and certainty on the caprice, the ignorance, or the moral 
 diseases, of those who are subject to their authority. 
 
 Pleasures are of many kinds. They may either be 
 pure and healthy, or vicious and diseased. And hence, 
 if moral duty depends on a mere summation of pleasures, 
 and an attempted calculation of their total amount, irre- 
 spective of any higher standard, it must be as mutable as 
 those pleasures themselves, which form its component 
 elements. No chain can be stronger than its weakest 
 link. In the view of pure utilitarianism, when the doc- 
 trine abides in its native simplicity, and is neither infected 
 nor improved by an attempt to ally it with Stoic or 
 Christian elements, moral right must be as mutable as the 
 capricious likings and dislikings of the most fretful, the 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 233 
 
 most childish, or the most vicious among those who are 
 included in the wide universe of moral agents. It may be 
 inferred logically, from the principle thus laid down, that 
 it is as much one part of moral duty to gratify the lusts of 
 the impure, or the malice of the devilish, as to please the 
 pure and the benevolent, and win the approval of the best 
 and wisest of mankind. 
 
 Still further, moral truth is eternal and immutable, 
 because it depends very partially, and in only a limited 
 sense, on those variable elements, which enter into all the 
 experience of human life, and diversity the great laws of 
 duty in their outward application. Truths, however fixed 
 and sure in themselves, contract a seeming variableness 
 when they are wedded to those facts, derived from expe- 
 rience and testimony alone, which do vary continually. 
 The principle extends to every department of applied 
 science. The truths of pure arithmetic are fixed and 
 irreversible, but the data of statistical science are depen- 
 dent on the accuracy of human observation and memory, 
 or the veracity of human testimony. And the same 
 principle must clearly apply to the higher subject of 
 ethics. There is and must be large room for the exercise 
 of a wise expediency, based on actual experience, when 
 the general doctrines of moral science are brought to bear, 
 in detail, on the actual wants and business of life. The 
 courses of the stars in the sky are fixed and stedfast in 
 their own nature. But when their light shines on the 
 troubled ocean, or even on the calm and peaceful lake 
 that sleeps amidst the hills, the image fluctuates and 
 trembles with every breath of wind that creates a passing 
 ripple or wavelet on the face of the waters. 
 
 The treatise of Cudworth, however encumbered with 
 scholastic forms of thought, which detract in some measure 
 
234 0N ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 from its value, contains some important truths, vital to 
 the integrity of moral science, and no less seasonable at 
 the present hour than when the learned writer first gave 
 them utterance. 
 
 And first he maintains earnestly, and with real force 
 of reasoning, that moral distinctions are no creation or 
 appointment of arbitrary power, but are founded essen- 
 tially on the nature of responsible agents, and of all 
 created being. Descartes had laid down the opposite 
 principle, that the Divine Omnipotence implied the depen- 
 dence of all things, the truths of geometry, and the dis- 
 tinctions of right and wrong, on some fiat of almighty 
 power, and that "no good or evil can be conceived, of 
 which any idea was in the Divine intellect, before the will 
 of God determined to make it such as it is." On this view 
 Cudw r orth observes as follows : 
 
 "If the natures and essences of all things depend upon 
 a will of God that is essentially arbitrary, there can be no 
 such thing as science or demonstration ; nor can the truth 
 of any mathematical or metaphysical proposition be known 
 otherwise than by some revelation of the will of God 
 concerning it, and a certain fanatic faith and persuasion 
 thereupon, that God would have such a thing to be true 
 or false for such a time, or so long. And so nothing 
 would be true or false naturally, but only positively, all 
 truth and science being arbitrarious things. Neither 
 would there be any moral certainty in the knowledge of 
 God himself, since it must wholly depend on the muta- 
 bility of a will in Him essentially indifferent and undeter- 
 mined." 
 
 "As for the argument that, unless the essences of 
 things, and all truths and falsehoods, depend on the arbi- 
 trary will of God, there would be something independent 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 235 
 
 of God, if it be well considered it will prove a mere bug- 
 bear. For no other genuine consequence is deducible 
 from this assertion, but that there is an eternal and immut- 
 able wisdom in the mind of God, and thence participated 
 by created beings, independent of the will of God. Now 
 the wisdom of God is as much God as the will of God ; 
 and whether of these two is best conceived to depend on 
 the other, will be determined from their nature. For 
 wisdom hath in itself the nature of a rule and measure, as 
 a most determinate and inflexible thing ; but will being, 
 as considered in itself, indefinite and indeterminate, has 
 the nature of a thing regulable and measurable. Where- 
 fore it is the perfection of will, as such, to be guided by 
 wisdom and truth. But to make wisdom, knowledge, and 
 truth to be arbitrarily determined by will, and regulated by 
 such a plumbean and flexible rale, is quite to destroy the 
 nature of it. Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in 
 creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a 
 participation of that one eternal, immutable, uncreated 
 wisdom of God, or like so many reflections of one face 
 made in several glasses, whereof some are clearer, some 
 more obscure, some standing nearer, others farther off." 
 
 "Moreover, it was the opinion of the wisest of the 
 philosophers that there is in the scale of being a nature of 
 goodness, superior to wisdom, which therefore measures 
 and determines the wisdom of God, as His wisdom 
 measures and determines His will. Wherefore, though 
 some make a contracted idea of God, consisting of nothing 
 else but will and power, yet His nature is better expressed 
 by others in the mystical representation of an infinite 
 circle, whose inmost centre is simple goodness, the rays 
 and area, all-comprehending and immutable wisdom, the 
 exterior periphery or circumference, omnipotent will or 
 
236 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 activity, by which everything without God is brought forth 
 into existence. Wherefore the will and power of God 
 have no command inwardly on the wisdom and knowledge 
 of God, or on the moral disposition of His nature, which is 
 essential goodness ; but the sphere of its activity is without 
 God, where it hath absolute command on the existences 
 of things ; and is always free, though not always in- 
 different, since it is its highest perfection to be determined 
 by infinite wisdom and infinite goodness." 
 
 His remarks on the hypothesis of some writers, 
 agreeing nearly with that of Protagoras, that nothing 
 can be known as absolutely true, but only on the as- 
 sumption that our faculties are rightly made, have a 
 striking application to some later speculations, which 
 deny that any knowledge is attainable of " things in 
 themselves." 
 
 " If we cannot be certain of the truth of any thing, 
 but only ex hypothesi, that our faculties are rightly 
 made, of which none can have any certain assurance but 
 only He that made them, then all created minds what- 
 soever must be condemned to eternal doubt. Neither 
 ought they ever to assent to any thing as certainly true, 
 since all their truth and knowledge is but relative to 
 their faculties, arbitrarily made, that may possibly be 
 false, and their clearest apprehensions nothing but per- 
 petual delusions. Wherefore, according to this doctrine, 
 we have no absolute certainty of the first principles of 
 all our knowledge, as that equals added to equals produce 
 equals, or that every number is either odd or even. We 
 cannot be sure of any mathematical or metaphysical 
 truth, or of the existence of God or of ourselves." 
 
 "For whereas some would prove the truth of their 
 faculties from hence, because there is a God whose nature 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 237 
 
 is such that He cannot deceive, this is nothing but a 
 circle, and makes no progress. For all the certainty they 
 have of the existence of God and of His nature depends 
 upon the arbitrary make of their faculties; which, for 
 aught they know, may be false. Nay, according to this 
 doctrine, no man can certainly know that there is any 
 absolute truth in the world at all. And this is very 
 strange to assert, that God cannot make a creature which 
 shall be able certainly to know either the existence 
 of God, or of himself, or whether there be any absolute 
 truth or no." 
 
 " The ultimate resolution of theoretical truth, and 
 the only criterion of it, is in the clearness of the appre- 
 hensions themselves, and not in any supposed blind and 
 unaccountable make of faculties. So that the certainty 
 of clear apprehensions is not to be derived from the 
 contingent truth of faculties, but the goodness of faculties 
 to be tried by the clearness and distinctness of appre- 
 hension. For to suppose that faculties may be so made, 
 as to create apprehensions of things that are not, is much 
 like that opinion of some, that all the new celestial 
 phenomena, as of the Jovian planets, and the mountains in 
 the moon, are no real things ; but that the clear, dia- 
 phanous crystal of the telescopes may be so cut, ground, 
 and polished, as to make all those clearly to appear to 
 sense, when there is no such thing." 
 
 "It is a fond imagination to suppose that it is de- 
 rogatory to the glory of God, to bestow or impart any such 
 gift upon His creatures as knowledge is, which hath an 
 intrinsic evidence in itself... It cannot be denied that men 
 are often deceived, and think they clearly comprehend 
 what they do not. But it does not follow, that they can 
 never be certain that they do clearly comprehend any- 
 
238 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 thing ; which is just as if we should argue, because in 
 our dreams we think we have clear sensations, we cannot 
 therefore ever be sure, when we are awake, that we see 
 things as they really are." 
 
 This doctrine of Cudworth, when rightly explained, and 
 freed from exaggerations which disguise its true sense, 
 that moral truths, or the contrasts of good and evil, of 
 right and wrong, of duty and transgression, are fixed, 
 eternal, and immutable in their own nature, and no mere 
 product of animal instinct or prudential arithmetic, no 
 arbitrary creation of an absolute will, lies at the founda- 
 tion of all Ethical Science. Whenever it is set aside, 
 Moral Philosophy expires, and nothing but a lifeless corpse 
 or shadowy phantom is left in its stead. Wherever the 
 attempt is made, and gains a wide acceptance, to replace 
 it by truths of a lower kind, drawn from the discoveries 
 of physiology, or the calculations of worldly prudence, the 
 fountains of thought are poisoned, and a moral palsy must 
 quickly seize on all the springs of national and social life. 
 The warning of Him, who is the true Light of the world, 
 applies to every variety of moral speculation, which im- 
 pinges on the firm, granite-like foundations that underlie 
 the superficial varieties of ethical teaching: — "If the light 
 that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness !" 
 
 It is a great evil to neglect the monitions of con- 
 science, to silence its calm and secret whispers through 
 the power of vice and selfish passion, and to give the 
 reins, in practice, to the lowest instincts of the human 
 heart. But the evil is far greater, and still more deeply 
 to be deplored, when selfishness is turned into an ethical 
 theory ; or when uncertain guesses, in physiology, on the 
 resemblances between man and other animals, are made 
 the excuse for denying conscience altogether, and replacing 
 
ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 239 
 
 it by the instinctive craving of men or beasts not to be 
 shut out from the company of their fellows, or by the 
 fear of slaves who dread the lash, and shrink from the 
 penalties of human law through dislike of suffering alone. 
 The logical defect in all such theories is no less striking 
 than the moral degradation to which they inevitably lead. 
 Their advocates need to pass over in silence the very 
 point on which the whole science of morals really depends. 
 The human animal has acquired, in some w T ay or other, a 
 liking for society. But how can the mere indulgence of 
 a social instinct awaken any sense of moral approval ? 
 There are many cases in which a refusal to indulge it, and 
 an abstinence from social intercourse in forms diseased or 
 excessive, may be one test and sign of real virtue. 
 
 For Wisdom's self 
 Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, 
 Where, with her best nurse Contemplation, 
 She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, 
 That in the various bustle of resort 
 Were all too ruffled, and too much impaired. 
 
 Again, the stage may easily be reached of dreading 
 the punishments of social law, and striving to escape 
 from them either by obedience or by concealment. But 
 how is this instinctive dread, too often the parent of 
 fraud, falsehood, and cunning, to rise into the dignity of 
 heroic virtue ? Only when, in the voices of human law, 
 the soul catches dim echoes of some far-off music from a 
 higher sphere. And, supposing that a perfect calculation 
 of the results of every action, both pleasant and painful, 
 could be made, how can this sum in arithmetic be raised 
 from its own to a higher level, and be made to infer a 
 moral conclusion, a lesson of right and wrong? Why 
 ouo-ht we to prefer the integral to its own differential, the 
 
240 ON ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE MORALITY. 
 
 collective series to its first and nearest term ? How am I 
 to know that it is right, and a moral duty, to trust my 
 calculation, and stifle the instinctive desire for a present 
 and immediate enjoyment, when the rightness and excel- 
 lence of pleasure is the basis and postulate of the whole 
 calculation ? We cannot rise, without the gift of reason, 
 from mere animal instinct to intelligent prudence, and 
 foresight of the distant future. And without the gift of 
 conscience, or some power of reason to discern a law of 
 good and right binding on the soul by its own authority, 
 we can never mount from the lower level of mere pru- 
 dence to the sense of duty and moral obligation. The 
 great truths which form the objects of Moral Philosophy 
 are no mere gas-lights of earth. They are stars which 
 shine down upon us from the upper firmament. Their 
 light may too often be clouded and obscured by the mists 
 of earth, and lost for a time from our view. But let the 
 mists be dispersed, and they shine out once more, pure 
 and bright as in the first infancy of the world. And 
 when we follow their sacred guidance, they lead our 
 thoughts upward from this land of strife and shadow 
 where we have often to walk in darkness, to a region of 
 light, purity, and peace, the ante-chamber of His palace 
 who sits enthroned in the beauty of holiness without 
 stain, and goodness without measure, above the water- 
 floods for evermore. 
 
LECTUKE XII. 
 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The doctrine of Conscience forms the subjective element 
 of Moral Science. It holds a middle place between that 
 aspect of the truth, which dwells on moral laws or prin- 
 ciples as fixed in their own nature, immutable and eternal, 
 and that doctrine of consequences, which traces out the 
 connection between the moral character of actions, and 
 results which either may be reasonably expected to follow, 
 or do really follow. The first, when separated from the 
 others, tends to a dreamy, unpractical idealism, the second 
 to a self-satisfied, capricious individualism, the third to a 
 cold, selfish, calculating, mechanical expediency. It is 
 only when the relation of the three principles to each 
 other is apprehended in its real harmony and proportion, 
 that ethical speculation can be freed from the risk of 
 serious evils. 
 
 Some of the main questions which may be started 
 respecting the place of conscience in a moral theory are 
 these. First, what is its nature and true meaning ? Next, 
 what are the extent and proper limits of its authority ? 
 Thirdly, is it capable or incapable of right education? 
 Lastly, if capable of it, on what must its sound and healthy 
 training depend, and what is the external standard which 
 it requires for its guidance ? 
 
 B. L. 16 
 
242 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 There are four doctrines, distinguishable from each other, 
 which have been held respecting the nature of conscience. 
 The first views it as an instinct of the animal nature, 
 developed and transformed ; the second, as a separate 
 sense or faculty, analogous to the senses of the body, 
 a special and arbitrary endowment of the human mind ; 
 the third, as a power of prudential calculation, linking 
 itself, by association of ideas, with strong emotions of 
 hope and fear; the fourth, as the reason itself, exercised 
 on truths of a special kind, or the moral relations between 
 intelligent agents. On this view the distinction is not so 
 much in the faculty itself, as in the character of those 
 truths with which the mind is occupied, whenever we speak 
 of the working of conscience, and the moral emotions of 
 the heart. 
 
 The first view of conscience may be dismissed in few 
 words. It has been thus expounded in a recent work. 
 "Man cannot avoid looking backward, and comparing the 
 impressions of past events and actions. He also looks 
 continually forward. Hence, after some temporary desire 
 or passion has mastered his social instincts, he will reflect 
 and compare the now weakened impression of such past 
 impulses with the ever present social instinct, and he will 
 then feel that sense of dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied 
 instincts leave behind them. Consequently he resolves to 
 acb differently for the future, and this is conscience. Any 
 instinct which is permanently stronger or more enduring 
 than another gives rise to a feeling, which we express by 
 saying that it ought to be obeyed." 
 
 It is strange how such an explanation of conscience or 
 moral emotion can Lave found acceptance with any 
 thoughtful mind. It assumes the existence in man of 
 those powers of meditation on the remote past and 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 243 
 
 distant future, which distinguish him from mere animals, 
 and constitute him a reasonable being, susceptible of 
 moral laws ; and it then proceeds to account for moral 
 emotions, apart from any higher truth, or any relation to 
 these specially human faculties, by the effect of animal 
 instinct alone. Does then every strong impulse, often 
 yielded to, create the sense of a moral obligation ? Is it 
 not the voice at once of a frequent experience, and of the 
 deepest philosophy, which is expressed in the words of the 
 Apostle, " The good that I would I do not, and the evil I 
 would not, that I do"? The yielding to a social instinct, 
 which has been violently thwarted, is an impulse of the 
 animal life, but no act of duty ; and, standing alone, has 
 no moral character whatever. It needs, in the phrase of 
 Professor Grote, to be " moralized," by the inquiry, — " Is it 
 right or wrong for me to satisfy this instinct ? Is it one 
 which ought to be followed, or resisted and controlled?" 
 Only after such a decision does the act assume a really 
 moral character. Feelings of malevolence, in our actual 
 world, are often very strong and very enduring. The 
 Indian will mark his victim for death, and pursue him 
 for years with undeviating aim and unrelenting malice. 
 Does this warrant the conclusion that the instinct 
 is very strong, and therefore ought to be obeyed? 
 Strength and Force, in the old Greek legend, were the 
 servants of Zeus, by whom Prometheus was bound, but 
 the heathen poet never dreamt of exalting them into the 
 parents of all virtue. He looked on them, rather, as the 
 most fitting impersonations of blind, servile obedience to 
 arbitrary and despotic power. It is neither the strength of 
 an instinct, nor its frequent recurrence, which the human 
 mind, unless demoralized by vice or false philosophy, will 
 dignify with a righteous character, and pronounce that it 
 
 16—2 
 
244 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 "ought to be obeyed." That strain is of a higher mood. 
 That voice speaks of a higher element in man's being 
 than animal instinct, or the craving for society alone. It 
 is a response and echo, within the soul, to a voice that 
 speaks to it from above. It bears witness to the great 
 truth that man is not merely a magnificent specimen of 
 zoology, but a being only a little lower than the angels, 
 created at first in the image of the invisible and eternal 
 God. 
 
 The opinion, which looks upon the conscience as a 
 moral sense, resembling those of the body, or a distinct 
 and peculiar faculty of the mind, deserves a fuller notice. 
 This is the view of Lord Shaftesbury in his Inquiry con- 
 cerning Virtue, and in the Characteristics, as well as of Dr 
 Hutcheson, and in substance it seems to be shared by 
 Butler also. "The mind," says Lord S., "observes not 
 only things, but actions and affections. The mind which 
 is thus spectator and auditor of other minds cannot be 
 without its eye and ear, so as to discern proportion, distin- 
 guish sound, and scan each sentiment or thought which 
 comes before it." " The true spring of Virtue," observes 
 Hutcheson, "is some determination of our nature to study 
 the good of others, or some instinct which influences us to 
 the love of others, as the moral sense determines our 
 approval." The phrase is based on a true analogy. But, 
 as employed by the writers who introduced it and made it 
 widely current, the truth it implied was mingled with 
 a serious defect. A concrete, positive, and arbitrary 
 character was thus assigned to all our moral emotions 
 and decisions, as if they depended on our being created, 
 through an act of Divine sovereignty, with a sense or faculty 
 of this peculiar kind. 
 
 Dr Brown condemns in words the theory of the "Moral 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 245 
 
 Sense," but adopts substantially the very same view. He 
 writes as follows : 
 
 "The great error of Dr Hutcheson and others, who 
 treat of the susceptibility of moral emotion under the 
 name of the moral sense, appears to me to consist in their 
 belief of certain moral qualities in actions, which excite in 
 us what they consider as ideas of those qualities, in the 
 same manner as external things give us, not merely pain 
 or pleasure, but notions or ideas of hardness, form, and 
 colour. It is on this account the great champion of this 
 doctrine professes to regard the moral principle as a sense; 
 from its agreement with what he conceives to be the 
 accurate definition of a sense — 'a determination of the 
 mind to receive any idea from the presence of an object, 
 which occurs to us independent of our will.' What he 
 terms an idea, in this case, is nothing more than an 
 emotion, considered in its relation to the action which has 
 excited it. A certain action is considered by us, a certain 
 emotion arises. There is no idea but of the agent himself, 
 and of the circumstances in which he was placed, and the 
 physical changes produced by him, and our ideas of these 
 we owe to other sources. To the moral principle, the 
 only principle of which Hutcheson could mean to speak as 
 a moral sense, we owe the emotion itself, and nothing but 
 the emotion." 
 
 Here, as in several other instances, Dr Brown, while 
 professing to detect and remove an error, retains it, and 
 makes it greater than before. u Susceptibility of moral 
 emotion," when compared with "the moral sense," is a 
 more cumbrous and circuitous, and certainly not a more 
 distinct or intelligible phrase. AVe might call the power 
 of eyesight "a susceptibility of physical emotion from 
 visible objects," but in so doing we should neither im- 
 
246 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 prove our style, nor add to the clearness of our concep- 
 tion. The doctrine of a moral sense has its strong and 
 its weak side. Its strength consists in the doctrine that 
 there are moral truths or relations without us, in moral 
 agents and their conduct, which have a certain analogy 
 to the relations of outward objects to each other, perceived 
 by the senses ; that these relations are equally true with 
 the other, and that we have a sense or faculty whereby 
 they are perceived. Its weakness consists in the notion 
 that the conscience is a special organ or faculty, like the 
 eye or ear of the body, constructed or implanted for this 
 especial purpose, as the eye for noting form and colour, 
 and the ear for sounds, and in seeming to press this partial 
 analogy so far as to overlook an important contrast. For 
 certainly our perception of rightness or wrongness in 
 actions, and of virtuous or vicious character, is not 
 exactly of the same kind as our sensation that honey is 
 sweet, that fire burns, and ice is cold. 
 
 Now Dr Brown seems to oppose or abandon that 
 aspect of Hutcheson's and Shaftesbury's view, which forms 
 its strength, and adopts and amplifies its weakness. The 
 term, sense, may suggest the notion either of truths or 
 facts without us, which we are able to perceive, or of 
 some present, transient sensation and feeling alone. Dr 
 Brown rests his ethical theory on the latter view of the 
 subject. We have certain emotions, however they may 
 arise. We have strong feelings of liking for some actions, 
 and disapproval of others. So far we can go, but no 
 further. Vice, virtue, merit, demerit, obligation, duty, 
 eternal truth, Divine law, are all pronounced to be one 
 and the same fact variously disguised, a susceptibility of 
 the emotions of moral approbation and disapprobation. 
 By this view the subject is said to be freed from much 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 247 
 
 superfluous argument. But the simplicity is of the same 
 kind, as if we strove to replace all the reasonings and con- 
 clusions of geometry, and the wide range of geographical 
 and astronomical discovery, by reducing them all to float- 
 ing, transient impressions of daylight and colour produced 
 in individual minds. We must first see, before we can 
 observe and discover. We must have a sensation of sound 
 through the ear, before we can arrive at a science of 
 acoustics, or drink in the rich and complex varieties of 
 human speech and musical harmony. There could be no 
 moral science if we were not capable of seeing in our 
 actions, or those of others, those moral features which 
 awaken feelings of shame and indignation, or else of ap- 
 proval, sympathy, and praise. But the very first step of real 
 progress consists in freeing our thoughts from dependence 
 on the fact of the present sensation, and in rising to the 
 apprehension of some abiding truth, which does not cease 
 to exist when we cease to observe it, or perversely turn 
 away from it, but abides unchanged amidst the confusion 
 and uncertainty of our human experience. The analogy 
 of the moral perceptions with those of the eye and the ear, 
 though it needs to be carefully limited, is real and im- 
 portant. But in either case the path of true wisdom is to 
 rise from the subjective sensation to the perception of 
 abiding realities ; and then to dwell upon these in quiet 
 thought, till they are freed more and more from transient 
 and accidental circumstances, and stand revealed to us in 
 the calm grandeur of eternal truth. 
 
 Others, again, see in conscience only a faculty of pru- 
 dential calculation, which has to deal with a large problem 
 of the consequences of actions, and learns by habit to 
 associate particular lines of conduct with the fear of 
 punishment and the hope of praise and reward. But 
 
248 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 while such an estimate of probable future results may 
 supply the materials to guide our actions, as well as our 
 feelings of moral desire and approval, it must still be plain 
 to those who reflect on the course of their own thoughts, 
 or who study carefully the reasonings of utilitarian theo- 
 rists, that the moral element in all these cases has to be 
 supplied from some other source, and cannot be created by 
 a process of calculation alone. The duty of seeking the 
 greatest good, whether of ourselves or the whole family 
 of mankind, must first be assumed, before we can enter 
 on the addition and subtraction of pains and pleasures, 
 and propose to ourselves, as an aim and object of desire, 
 " the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Once 
 assume benevolence, on the widest scale, to be an impera- 
 tive dut}-, a voice of heaven, in some way or other, to the 
 heart of man, and then the laborious attempt to decide 
 what on the whole is best to be done, and ought to be 
 done, may be entered upon with real earnestness, however 
 imperfect the success may be. But until this principle 
 has been assumed, we may have, instead of world-wide 
 benevolence, the mere self-conceit of cold-hearted theorists, 
 who deceive themselves into the notion that they are 
 moral reformers, and are bestowing great benefits on man- 
 kind by their fancied skill in a new arithmetic, when they 
 are really indulging the pride of a false philosophy, and 
 undermining the foundations of all genuine morality. 
 
 The fourth and last view of conscience is that which 
 looks upon it as no separable faculty, but simply as a 
 name for reason, or the mind itself, when it is occupied 
 with truths of one especial kind. Its supremacy will 
 thus be no arbitrary gift, but result directly from the 
 perceived supremacy of those laws of right and wrong 
 and moral obligation with which it has to deal. It is 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 249 
 
 well defined by Dr Calderwood : " Conscience is that 
 power of mind, by which moral law is discovered to 
 each individual for the guidance of his conduct. It 
 is the reason, as that which discovers to us absolute 
 moral truth, having the authority of sovereign moral 
 law. It is an essential requisite for the direction of an 
 intelligent agent, gifted with free will, and affords the 
 basis for moral obligation and responsibility in human 
 life. In discovering truth, it is seen to be a cognitive 
 or intellectual power. Either it does not discover truth, 
 or if it does, it is not a form of feeling, or combination of 
 feelings, emotions, or desires. Truth is that which we 
 see, and implies seeing power. Moral law is that which 
 we can know, and implies knowing power. The authority 
 of conscience is an abbreviated form for expressing the 
 authority which is common to all the laws of morality. 
 In affirming its authority over the other powers of the 
 mind, we merely indicate that moral law is authoritative 
 for the regulation of all the other motives and restraining 
 forces which operate within our human nature/' 
 
 The same view of the nature of conscience has been 
 already affirmed by me in another work. 
 
 " It may be allowable, as a figure of rhetoric, to speak 
 of conscience as a judge, which holds its court within the 
 soul, and pronounces its judgment on all the lower 
 faculties. But such metaphors, when constantly used, 
 are liable to create a serious delusion. Conscience is 
 simply the mind itself, exercising its judgment on the 
 moral relations of right and wrong, on its own actions and 
 the actions of others. Its supremacy over other faculties 
 is merely a varied expression for the truth, that the 
 relations the mind contemplates, when its acts receive' 
 this name, are in their own nature of binding authority, 
 
250 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 and claim allegiance and submission. In its other actings 
 the mind contemplates things equal or inferior to itself, 
 or superior beings, irrespective of any claim to actual 
 dominion and supremacy. But the laws of moral duty 
 are royal laws in their own nature, and speak with the 
 voice of a king ; and the judgments of the mind, in 
 which it recognizes them, must partake of the same 
 character. Thus the supremacy of conscience depends 
 entirely on the distinctive nature of moral truth ; but 
 its defects, weakness, and error, are due to the mind itself, 
 and are one form of its moral guilt and infirmity. Its 
 dictates are binding so far as they are genuine reflections 
 of eternal truth, or of real moral relations perceived by 
 the soul. But the mistakes of conscience have no more 
 real authority than any other kind of error. They have 
 this peculiar nature, that they make sin inevitable. In 
 obeying them, man sins against the laws of God ; in 
 disobeying them, against his own convictions of duty, 
 and the internal harmony of his moral being." 
 
 On a just view of the nature of conscience must 
 depend the answer to the question, what are the extent 
 and proper limits of its authority ? Is it supreme in any 
 sense? And if so, is it absolutely or only relatively 
 supreme ? 
 
 " The high honour " has been claimed for Bp. Butler 
 " of establishing the supremacy of conscience." And he 
 certainly lays it down with great clearness and force in 
 these well-known words. 
 
 "That principle by which we survey and either ap- 
 prove or disapprove our own heart, temper and actions, 
 is not only to be considered as what is in its turn to have 
 some influence, which may be of every passion, and the 
 lowest appetites ; but likewise as being superior, as from 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 25 I 
 
 its very nature manifestly claiming superiority over all the 
 others ; insomuch that you cannot form a notion of this 
 faculty, conscience, without taking in judgment, direction, 
 superintendency. This is a constituent part of the idea 
 of the faculty, and to preside and goVern, from the very 
 constitution of men, belongs to it. Had it strength as it 
 has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it 
 would absolutely govern the world." (Serm. II. p. 36.) 
 
 This claim, however, of conscience to the governing 
 office, and a rightful authority over all the powers and 
 actions of mind and body, seems too plainly involved 
 in its nature, and too elementary a truth, to be rightly 
 assigned to any modern author as his own discovery. 
 All that Bp. Butler could do was to reassert a familiar 
 truth, involved in the very conception of a moral law, 
 and its apprehension by the mind of man. He has un- 
 folded it in contrast with one special form of immoral 
 reasoning, which would set up a democratic equality of 
 all the desires of the mind, or appetites of the body, 
 simply because they exist. Such a republication of old 
 truths in some varied aspect, to meet fresh phases of 
 error, may be very important in its place. But we honour 
 the moralist at the expense of the great science with 
 which he deals, when we represent its fundamental data 
 to be so obscure as to have been first discovered in modern 
 times. These truths are old as the creation. The su- 
 premacy of the moral law, on which that of conscience 
 wholly depends, is revealed in the books of Moses, long 
 ages ago, more clearly and powerfully than in the sermons 
 of Butler, or in the treatises of heathen or Christian 
 moralists of later times. 
 
 The authority, it has been well observed, "is not 
 found in the nature of the faculty itself. The faculty is 
 
252 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 a power of sight, such as makes a perception of self- 
 evident truth possible to man, and contributes nothing to 
 the truth which is perceived. To the truth itself belongs 
 inherent authority, that is, absolute right to command, not 
 force to constrain." 
 
 The supremacy, then, of conscience is limited and 
 relative, not absolute. The eye does not create the land- 
 scape on which it gazes. Neither does the individual 
 conscience create the moral truths it contemplates, or 
 clothe them with their claim to obedience and honour. 
 The precepts of genuine morality, natural or revealed, are 
 of direct and immediate obligation. They bind, because 
 they exist, and are the voice of God. They can be felt 
 to be binding, and guide the practice, only so far as their 
 authority is accepted, and their true meaning discerned. 
 A personal conviction with regard to our own duty 
 neither adds to their authority, nor creates the obligation 
 to obey; just as an image on the retina does not really 
 intervene between the eye and the landscape, but is only 
 the necessary condition, from the structure of the eye, on 
 which healthy vision depends. 
 
 Is the conscience, as a faculty of the mind, capable of 
 education and training? To this question Dr Calderwood, 
 whose definition I have quoted, gives a negative answer. 
 In this he dissents, as he owns, from many authors with 
 whom he substantially agrees in other things, as Reid, 
 Dugald Stewart, and Dr Whewell, but quotes Kant on 
 the other side. Conscience, he says, from its very nature, 
 cannot be educated. Education in the sense of training 
 is impossible. As well propose to teach the eye how and 
 what to see, and the ear how and w r hat to hear, as teach 
 reason how to perceive the self-evident, and what truths 
 are of this nature. All this has been provided for in the 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 253 
 
 human constitution. And he then quotes with approval 
 the strange dictum of Kant, that " an erring conscience 
 is a chimera." (Cald. Handbook, p. 81.) 
 
 The assertion of Dr Whewell, here condemned, is 
 perfectly true, and the opposite statement an error sur- 
 prising in an author of such clear good sense and ability. 
 No doubt, if we begin by confining the name of conscience 
 to the sound and healthy conclusions of the mind on moral 
 questions, to its clear and distinct vision of spiritual truth, 
 or its perfect insight into the course of practical duty, then 
 all need of training is excluded by the definition. But the 
 definition itself will then degenerate into a barren truism. 
 The mind needs no training to judge rightly, wherever 
 right judgment is already attained. It needs no increase 
 of light, where it already sees clearly. But this is neither 
 the popular/ nor yet the scientific meaning of the word. 
 We certainly do not mean by conscientious convictions 
 those which are infallibly right, but simply those which 
 are honestly entertained. A person follows his conscience 
 when he does what he sincerely thinks to be his duty, 
 though he may have mistaken his duty, and acted on a 
 wrong judgment. To the authority of Kant, whose para- 
 doxes on this subject are many, we may oppose the far 
 higher authority of the inspired Apostle, himself the most 
 intensely conscientious of men, — " To them that are de- 
 filed and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their own 
 heart and conscience are defiled." 
 
 The illustration to which the appeal is made proves 
 the exact converse. The eye does need to be trained, as 
 in the case of the sailor, to discern distant objects, or as 
 with the artist and his disciples, to catch the features of 
 some magnificent landscape ; and the ear is capable of 
 and needs much training, to receive the more delicate 
 
254 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 distinctions and harmonies of sound. Neither ors^an 
 would admit of training at all, if the sense were wholly 
 wanting, as in the deaf and the blind. But those who 
 are dim of sight and dull of hearing may do much, by 
 artificial helps, to remedy, and in some cases to remove, 
 their natural infirmity, while careful training how and 
 what to observe is an apprenticeship required in almost 
 every field of scientific inquiry. 
 
 I venture, then, with all confidence, to reverse the 
 statement I have quoted above, which rests only on a 
 deceptive limitation in the use of a familiar term. Con- 
 science is a faculty which, like the eye and the ear, 
 does require education, but for more urgent reasons, 
 and to still nobler ends. The Apostle speaks of those 
 who " by reason of use have their senses exercised to dis- 
 cern good and evil." Eyes, which are suddenly brought 
 out of thick darkness, cannot at once bear the full 
 light of clear noonday. They must first be shielded from 
 excess of light, and gradually taught to use their newly 
 acquired possession. For sight, though we speak of it 
 under the name of intuition, to denote what is most im- 
 mediate and spontaneous in the action of the mind, is 
 really the integral of an immense number of experiences 
 gradually acquired. We see the book, the room, the 
 landscape before us. The perception is swift, like the 
 motion of that light which is the medium of vision, with 
 its billions of vibrations in a single second. But it is 
 really the summation of countless elements of knowledge, 
 in which form, colour, perspective, distance, natural pro- 
 perties, the indications of sight, sound, touch, smell, are 
 all fused and blended into one harmonious whole. And 
 in each direction the sense is capable, by diligent use, of 
 further development. The geologist sees much in every 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 255 
 
 stone, or layer of earth, or mountain escarpment, the 
 naturalist in every plant, or beast, or bird, which does not 
 meet the eye of the common observer. Rich and various 
 associations of every kind gather around the objects, on 
 which the eye rests with fond and deepening interest. 
 Our minds, taught through the senses, lend to nature 
 its wedding garment or its shroud, while they perceive 
 the sad and joyful associations with which every scene 
 is peopled by thoughtful and intelligent observers. The 
 senses do not create, as the bee does not create the honey 
 which it sucks from innumerable flow T ers. But they lay 
 in growing stores by constant diligence of observation. 
 
 Conscience is the eye of the soul. If it be single and 
 upright, the whole moral being will be filled with light. 
 By wakeful vigilance it makes continual accessions to 
 the soul's perception of truth. The landscape is wide 
 and various. Every part of it yields new treasures to 
 the observer, in proportion as he gazes more thoughtfully 
 on the objects submitted to his view. In its first and 
 early stage of activity, when it is like a child still ignorant 
 of the outward world, or a prisoner just escaped from 
 some dark cell, it may scarcely be able to see at all, and 
 may need the help of others more experienced, or higher 
 in moral attainment, before it can detect a thousand 
 features of the objects which lie plainly before it. But 
 the truths contemplated are real, fixed, and abiding truths. 
 The power of the mind, by which it discerns them, is a 
 noble gift of God, a faculty which may be dulled and 
 clouded by vice and sensuality, but is never wholly and 
 hopelessly withdrawn. And the constant training of that 
 faculty, by use and exercise, to fulfil the solemn duties 
 confided to it, is not only possible, but highly expedient, 
 and itself a primary moral duty of ceaseless obligation. 
 
256 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Whoever has no longing for clearer insight into the laws 
 of righteousness, and does not strive at all for their fuller 
 apprehension and practical attainment, must be sinking 
 into a moral lethargy, the dangerous precursor of disease 
 and death. 
 
 But if the conscience is capable of education, and 
 requires to be exercised and trained, how is this great 
 end to be secured ? Where shall we find a standard, to 
 which the appeal can be made? How are we to detect 
 deviations from this standard, and raise the conscience, 
 when subject to illusion, distortion, or paralysis, to a 
 higher level ? This is clearly a question of the greatest 
 practical importance. For though Kant may have uttered 
 the paradox, that "an erring conscience is a chimera," 
 unless the laws of language deceive us on the one side, or 
 the lessons of universal experience on the other, an erring 
 conscience has been, in every age of the world, the most 
 fruitful parent of strife, passion, warfare, and every variety 
 of human folly and crime. 
 
 That school of ethical teachers, who would lay the 
 foundations of morals in some recent discoveries or guesses 
 of modern anatomy and physiology, call loudly on the inde- 
 pendent or ideal moralist to produce a standard, which 
 on their principles it is impossible to find. Where, they 
 ask, is this rule to be found? "What is the standard 
 conscience? That must be got at, or morality is not a 
 subject to be reasoned or written about... We have stand- 
 ards of length, of weight, of measure, which, even though 
 embodied in material objects, can hardly be said to have 
 the independence contended for... When we are called 
 upon to set our watches by Greenwich time, it is not a 
 standard beyond humanity. The collective body of astro- 
 nomers have agreed on a mode of reckoning, founded on 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 257 
 
 the still more general recognition of the solar day as the 
 principal unit. At Greenwich observatory observations 
 are made, which determine the standard of this country ; 
 and the population, in accepting that standard, know or 
 may know that they are following the Astronomer Royal, 
 and the body of astronomers generally.' * 
 
 To this challenge Professor Maurice gives a partial and 
 indirect reply by an -appeal to two fictitious characters, 
 Tennyson's Northern Farmer, haunted by strange death- 
 bed scruples, and Tito in Romola. He infers from these 
 excursions of fancy, in its truest and most faithful pictures 
 of human life, that conscience is a fact and not a fiction, 
 however hard its proper standard may be to find. But I 
 think we may go considerably further and find, in those 
 very illustrations from science to which the objector 
 appeals, some real help to remove the phantoms of hopeless 
 doubt and uncertainty which are raised by the necro- 
 mancy of false theories, to crowd around our path, and 
 hinder our clear perception of moral truths. 
 
 And first, how is it that, even in the business of daily 
 life, we need standards of length, weight, and measure ? 
 Surely this is a sign, in itself, that men in all their social 
 activity need some common, objective truth, to which all 
 may appeal. They must have measures free from the 
 caprice, the ignorance, and the perverted selfishness, of the 
 individual buyer or seller, or else the wheels of commerce 
 would stick fast in the mire, and the business of life come 
 almost to an end. We thus escape from the vague guess- 
 work of barbarous times, in which every man's arm or foot 
 was his own standard, and attain something firmer, more 
 definite, and more exact. And the standard is better, not 
 because many conspire to receive it, but for a more solid 
 reason. Patient skill and thought have been employed, 
 B.L. 17 
 
258 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 to get rid, as far as possible, of the sources of error, to 
 secure the best materials for the rod with which other 
 lengths are compared, to guard against possible flexure, to 
 allow for changes of temperature, and approach nearer and 
 nearer to an ideal of fixity, which science teaches us, after 
 all, we have not perfectly attained, while it no less plainly 
 assures us of the reality and closeness of the approximation. 
 
 But these standards, it is objected, are arbitrary in 
 their own nature, however superior to the rules and mea- 
 sures they may have displaced. And the reason is plain. 
 Length, solid capacity, weight and time, have no absolute 
 unit. They are matters, not of pure reason, but of prac- 
 tical observation and experiment. They stretch out con- 
 tinuously between zero and the infinite. Before we can 
 compare them, a unit must be assumed in every case, and 
 the choice is a matter of convenience, custom, and usage 
 alone. The relation of the series of numbers to the dimen- 
 sions of space, the force of gravity, and the sequence of 
 time, is not fixed but variable. It belongs to the province, 
 not of absolute reason, but of intelligent will. The rela- 
 tions of numbers, in themselves, are fixed and unalterable. 
 We cannot even conceive them to be reversed. So are 
 also the relations of space and figure, of force and time. 
 But the link which connects the first with all the rest 
 does not belong to the category of pure reason, but is bor- 
 rowed from the domain of positive appointment, and of 
 human choice and will. 
 
 Even here, when once the choice has been made, there 
 is a ceaseless effort of science to eliminate error, and attain 
 a standard of ideal perfection. The first aim is to secure 
 that every copy shall agree with the original standard, 
 at least within limits practically insensible in the busi- 
 ness of life. This could not be done, if lengths, weights, 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE, 259 
 
 measures, intervals, because each involves one arbitrary 
 unit, were in themselves capricious and arbitrary things. 
 The yard, the metre, the pound, the gramme, and in fresh 
 branches of science the units of work and of electric ten- 
 sion, are, if possible, to be everywhere the same; and 
 all secondary measures are tested, corrected, and im- 
 proved, from time to time, by comparison with the ori- 
 ginals of which they bear the name. 
 
 But the effort proceeds still further. The primitive 
 measure of length or capacity, in its concrete form, is seen 
 and known to be liable to various changes, which interfere 
 with its use as a perfect standard. The rod may bend, and 
 the flexure, though slight, will cause a real variation of 
 length. It enlarges with heat and contracts with cold. 
 The measure of weight is still more variable. It is affected 
 by every change in the unit of length to which it is re- 
 ferred, and has other weaknesses of its own. It is affected 
 by the buoyancy of the air, which varies with temperature 
 and other changes, and still more by the latitude on 
 the earth's surface. Thus every standard ceases to be an 
 external, physical reality. One arbitrary element must 
 remain from the nature of the objects to be measured, but 
 all beside is scientific and ideal. The rod, by which length 
 is measured, is the unit under ideal conditions of tempera- 
 ture, seldom or never realized in the actual measure- 
 ment. Or else it is a fixed, ideal ratio to some ideal pen- 
 dulum, vibrating in an ideal latitude, and at an ideal level, 
 in a given part of the time of the earth's revolution ; or is 
 some decimal fraction of an ideal elliptic quadrant of the 
 surface of the earth. 
 
 In the standards of time this progressive effort is still 
 more striking and instructive. The loose impressions, 
 which vary with every mood and phase of individual 
 
 17—2 
 
260 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 thought, are first replaced by a general reference to that 
 universal standard, the natural day. But the sunrise and 
 sunset vary widely with the times of the year; and the hour- 
 glass and clepsydra are invented to divide more exactly 
 the hours and intervals of each day, which were more rudely 
 guessed before from the place of the sun in the sky. 
 Clocks and watches are invented, and these are successively 
 tested and verified by the growing exactness of celestial 
 observations. The earliest and most popular unit of time, 
 the natural day, when completed by the night, or reckoned 
 from noon to noon or midnight to midnight, is found by 
 science to be more stedfast than the other celestial cycles. 
 But, to secure fuller accuracy, one important change has 
 to be made, and the solar is turned for popular use into the 
 mean solar, and for observations into the still more perfect 
 standard, the sidereal day. And even here the striving 
 after a perfect standard does not cease. However stedfast 
 the earth's rotation, it has been lately inferred that, from 
 tidal friction, some slight change may still occur in the 
 course of ages. And an attempt has therefore been made, 
 by ascertaining the rotation of Mars to the fraction of a 
 second, to eliminate, by a comparison of the days of two 
 neighbouring planets, the errors that might possibly arise 
 from accepting either of them, alone, for an invariable 
 measure. 
 
 Now all this process, by which standards of length, 
 weight, measure and time, are first constituted, and then 
 verified and improved, tends not to confirm but to 
 disprove the dogma of those whom Plato calls "flow- 
 ing philosophers," by the latest of whom this appeal 
 is made. These facts lend no countenance to the 
 ignoble theory that distinctions of right and wrong are 
 the creations of human fancy, or the result of artificial 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 26 1 
 
 associations of thought, due solely to the positive ap- 
 pointment of rules by human lawgivers, and to the dread 
 of social punishment alone. Arbitrary units do not 
 enter into the domain of pure science. In arithmetic, 
 geometiy, and mechanics, our reasoning is wholly inde- 
 pendent of the yard, the pound, the metre, the gramme, 
 which may be needful in the business of actual life. 
 The conclusions depend either on the numerical series 
 itself, or on proportions of distance, weight, force, and 
 figure only. In all practical science these units are 
 needful, and link the truths of pure reason with the 
 realities of the actual world. Actual weights, lengths, 
 and intervals, can all be conceived to have been different, 
 and are to be learned by observation alone. But when 
 once the transition is made, the whole aim and struggle 
 of science is to restrict, within its narrowest limits, the 
 uncertainty which attends the entrance of this arbitrary 
 element. A separate science has been devised, to elimi- 
 nate the errors of observation in the most effectual way, 
 and to combine the separate data of the experiments in 
 such intimacy of relation to each other, that the result 
 may approach as nearly as possible to the character of 
 pure and scientific truth. 
 
 The astronomers in our observatories do not create 
 either the solar or the sidereal day. The accurate measure 
 of time, which the nation obtains through their labours, is 
 no creation of the scientific observer. He merely gains, by 
 careful experiment, a more exact knowledge of that diurnal 
 rotation of the earth, which was a settled fact of nature 
 before observatories were built, or telescopes and transit 
 instruments were made. The natural standard exists, not 
 fixed in its own nature, but by the present constitution 
 of our system. The task of the man of science is to die- 
 
262 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 cern it clearly, and to correct, by means of its evidence, 
 carefully observed, the various errors which attach to 
 looser reckonings of time by mankind at large. 
 
 The principle in Ethics is the same, and is only varied 
 in its application. Pure morals, like arithmetic and 
 geometry, involve no arbitrary unit, but occupy a higher 
 level of fixed and absolute truth. The great laws of 
 duty, and the contrast of moral good and evil, are in- 
 separable from the nature and existence of agents en- 
 dowed with reason and free will, who are capable of 
 mutual injury or blessing. They are firm and sure, like 
 the properties of number and space, and like these, open 
 a wide and immense field for the attainment of certain 
 truth. A round square is not more inconceivable than 
 the union of causeless and malicious hate, or of deceit and 
 treacherous cunning, with the attribute of perfect good- 
 ness. But when we pass from the great law of love to 
 the realities of moral action in the world around us, an 
 arbitrary element begins to appear. That law, as divinely 
 revealed, includes a reference to the actual powers and 
 constitution of those who are subject to its authority. 
 Where the strength is greater, and the heart and mind 
 and soul are more largely gifted, the precept of duty, to love 
 with all the mind and strength, must assume a larger 
 compass, and range over a wider field. And when we 
 descend lower, and enter on the complex relationships of 
 life, the positive and variable elements become still more 
 numerous. In every circle of human society, whether 
 more narrow or comprehensive, in the famity, the church, 
 and the state, secondary standards, the product of local 
 custom or national legislation, need to be extensively 
 employed, and these may vary more or less from each 
 other. The principle of obedience to laws ordained by a 
 
THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 26$ 
 
 just authority is the same, but the laws may be varied 
 to meet the varying circumstances of national and social 
 life. Yet this is no proof or sign that they are founded 
 on caprice and the selfishness of power alone. We might 
 infer, with equal truth and wisdom, that the labours 
 of our royal astronomers had created the stedfast order 
 of the earth's revolution, and of the celestial movements. 
 A perfect standard, wholly free from arbitrary and positive 
 elements, is only possible in that highest department of 
 morals, where it dwells in the light of heaven, and leaves 
 behind it all the specialties of earthly life in the presence 
 of God's eternal throne. But even where such perfection is 
 not attainable, a ceaseless effort to approach nearer to its 
 attainment is the first instinct of all geuuine science. The 
 lazy and the dissolute may abandon the search, and resign 
 themselves, either in wilfulness or despondency, to the 
 loose guesses of capricious ignorance, or the blind impulses 
 of self-will. But true morality, like all genuine science, 
 strives ever to ascend from the fleeting, variable phe- 
 nomena, where no rule or law is seen, to the perception 
 of a law that abides in the midst of perpetual change, 
 and a standard pure and absolute, on which the secondary 
 copies, useful for the guidance of daily life, depend for 
 all their real worth, by which they must also be tested, 
 when they are found to vary and contradict each other. 
 For even human standards of length or measure are not 
 mere arbitrary inventions. They point silently and secretly 
 to a fixed relation in the nature of things, without 
 which the attempt to provide them for general use, and 
 then to correct their errors, would be impossible. The 
 words of Cudworth include a reply, by anticipation, to 
 the sceptical inference falsely drawn from human reckon- 
 ings of time. 
 
264 THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 "A horologe is not mere silver and gold, brass and 
 steel, any way mingled or confounded together. It is 
 such an apt and proportionable disposition of these ma- 
 terials as may harmoniously conspire to make up one 
 equal and uniform motion ; which runs parallel, as it were, 
 with the motion of time, and, passing round the horary 
 circle, and measured by it, may also measure out that silent 
 and successive flux, which, like a still and deep river, 
 carries down all things along with it indiscernibly and 
 without any noise ; and which in its progressive motion, 
 treads so lightly and softly that it leaves no traces, prints, 
 or footsteps at all behind it." 
 
 Thus all human standards of weight and time and 
 measure imply a deeper law or fact of nature on which 
 they depend. And human conscience, in like manner, in 
 all its diversities and partial errors, points upward silently 
 to a law of eternal and unchanging righteousness, whose 
 seat is the bosom of God, and whose voice is the harmony 
 of the world, the music of the celestial spheres. 
 
LECTURE XIII. 
 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 A THIRD element, which must enter into all inquiries con- 
 cerning the foundations of Moral Science, consists in the 
 relation between moral acts themselves and the results 
 or consequences to which they lead. The tree is known 
 and tested by its fruit ; and the nature of the fountain, by 
 the streams which flow from it, and the verdure or barren- 
 ness of the territory through which they flow. When this 
 element is wholly set aside, as in some schemes of " intui- 
 tive morals," ethical teaching will be likely to assume a 
 vague, dreamy, and unreal character, and will awaken 
 natural distrust in practical minds. On the other hand, 
 when this view of the subject is made the one sufficient key 
 to unlock all the secrets of conscience, and the mysteries 
 of human life, all the highest and noblest aspirations of 
 the soul are liable to be lost and buried in a quagmire 
 of calculations impossible to be performed, from which 
 extrication is hopeless. Such is the fundamental defect 
 of all purely utilitarian theories. 
 
 Every moral action has a threefold relation, to a 
 precedent law of right and duty, to which the agent 
 owes allegiance, — to a present faculty of the agent himself 
 whether called conscience, the moral sense, or the prac- 
 
266 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 tical reason, by which the law is perceived, and becomes ap- 
 plied to his own heart and life, — and to the results in his 
 own later experience, and in the happiness or unhappiness 
 of others, to which right or wrong conduct, a virtuous or 
 a vicious life, is sure to lead. And this triple character 
 of all human action is only the reflection of that higher 
 truth, which sums up the noblest conceptions of Christian 
 Theology : — "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him 
 are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen." 
 
 The doctrine which makes utility the exclusive test 
 of right and wrong, and decides on the moral character 
 of actions by their supposed or expected consequences 
 alone, may assume very different forms. The first is the 
 theological, in which it borrows, but in borrowing distorts 
 and partially degrades, some great truths of the Christian 
 revelation. God wills the happiness of mankind. He 
 commands us to practise universal beneficence. His will 
 is sanctioned by promises and threatenings, that are to be 
 fulfilled in a future life. Therefore self-love requires us 
 to obey His command, and to practise works of social 
 kindness, in hope of gaining the promised reward. But 
 in applying the principle we are left to our own judgment; 
 and the known tendencies of actions, deduced from ex- 
 perience, are said to be our chief guide. 
 
 The second form of the doctrine is the philanthropic 
 or benevolent. All the motives of religious faith are 
 either formally set aside, or silently disappear from view. 
 In their place there is borrowed from the rival doc- 
 trine of intuitive morality a vast a priori maxim, the 
 supreme, essential obligation, needing no proof, and as- 
 sumed to be self-evident, of universal philanthropy or 
 benevolence. But this great principle, whether borrowed 
 from Christianity or from philosophic idealism, is no 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 267 
 
 sooner assumed, than it is disguised, concealed, and con- 
 substantiated, under the form and accidents of a complex 
 process of experiment and calculation. The whole busi- 
 ness of morals is to calculate results, and work out pro- 
 blems of maxima from imperfect premises ; while the one 
 element which alone has a truly ethical character, the 
 deliberate, earnest, conscientious aim to do good to our 
 fellows, and in so doing to please and serve the common 
 Creator and Preserver of mankind, is left habitually out 
 of sight, lest it should embarrass and disturb that pro- 
 cess of arithmetic on which the whole science is made to 
 depend. 
 
 The third form is the philosophically selfish, or that of 
 Epicurus and his later disciples. It recognizes no religious 
 faith in its scheme of morals, nor any need for motives 
 drawn from the Christian message of a life to come. Nei- 
 ther does it purloin from the Scriptures the second great 
 commandment, and then conceal the precious treasure, as 
 Achan hid the talent of gold in the soil of his tent, burying 
 it in the heart of a system of pleasure-seeking arithmetic, 
 with which it has no natural connection. It lays down 
 the principle, based on certain animal instincts, that the 
 attainment of personal pleasure is the main end and 
 business of life. And then it proceeds to mitigate the 
 harshness, and prune away the grossness, of the naked 
 theory, by insisting on the need of a wise and thoughtful 
 prudence, grounded on the lessons of experience, to free 
 men from the pursuit of vicious indulgence, and to prove 
 the superior gain of temperance, kindness, the restraint of 
 passion, and the cultivation of private friendship. And 
 there can be no doubt that the laws of prudence, when 
 really studied and observed, may form the first steps in an 
 upward progress, from which the mind must, soon or late, 
 
2 68 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 gain clear glimpses of higher and holier laws of action 
 than the pursuit of selfish and personal pleasure alone. 
 
 The fourth and last form is that of political selfishness. 
 Virtue, on this view, consists in a habit of submission to 
 outward laws, created and sustained by the fear of human 
 punishment. Instead of rising above the love of fame, 
 
 That last infirmity of noble mind, 
 
 it consists rather in one of the worst infirmities of minds 
 both feeble and ignoble; that is, in the animal fear of phy- 
 sical suffering, engrained and engrafted in the heart by 
 cultivating the habits and instincts of a slave. 
 
 The attraction of all these theories lies in the desire 
 to escape from the caprices of individual conscience, and 
 uncertain standards that may pass current in society from 
 time to time, and to obtain for morals some firm and 
 solid basis, which does not vary with the fashions of the 
 day. From the ethics of common sense and instinctive 
 feeling we may either rise towards the stars, or descend 
 to find safer footing on the solid earth below. Thus we 
 are told that " utility sets up an outward standard in the 
 room of an inward, being the substitution of a regard to 
 consequences for a mere unreasoning sentiment or feeling." 
 And again, that " the contest between the morality which 
 appeals to an external standard, and that which grounds 
 itself on internal conviction, is the contest of progressive 
 morality against stationary, of reason and argument against 
 the deification of mere opinion and habit." In reality, it is 
 needful both to rise and to descend ; to gaze on the skies 
 above, and also to -tread firmly on the ground beneath 
 our feet. But when philosophy would teach us that, to 
 attain certainty, we must not only tread on the ground, 
 but that our eyes must " be always downward bent," to 
 explore the buried riches of the soil beneath us, we may 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 269 
 
 remind it that the discoveries of genuine science often re- 
 verse the too hasty conclusions of the senses, and that fixity 
 is rather to be found in the laws of the starry heavens than 
 in the swiftly moving, ever-changing surface of that earth 
 on which our feet seem to rest so firmly below. 
 
 The principle, which forms the basis of the utilitarian 
 doctrine, has been laid down by Bentham, in his Theory 
 of Legislation, in these words : — 
 
 " A principle is a first idea, which is made the begin- 
 ning or basis of a system of reasonings. To illustrate it 
 by a sensible image, it is a fixed point to which the first 
 link of a chain is attached. Such a principle must be 
 clearly evident. To illustrate and explain it must secure 
 its acknowledgment. Such are the axioms of mathematics : 
 they cannot be rejected without falling into absurdity. 
 
 " The logic of utility consists in setting out, in all the 
 operations of the judgment, from the calculation or com- 
 parison of pains and pleasures, and in not allowing the 
 interference of any other idea. 
 
 " I am a partizan of the principle of utility, when I 
 measure my approbation or disapprobation of a public or 
 private act by its tendency to produce pleasure or pain ; 
 when I employ the words just, unjust, moral, immoral, 
 good, bad, simply as collective terms, including the ideas 
 of certain pains or pleasures ; it being always understood 
 that I use the words, pain and pleasure, in their ordinary 
 signification, without inventing any arbitrary definition 
 for the sake of excluding certain pleasures, or denying the 
 existence of certain pains. In this matter we want no 
 refinement, no metaphysics. It is not necessary to con- 
 sult Plato or Aristotle. Pain and pleasure are what every 
 one feels to be such, the peasant and the prince, the un- 
 learned and the philosopher. 
 
270 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 "He who adopts the principle of utility esteems virtue 
 to be a good, only on account of the pleasures which re- 
 sult from it ; he regards vice as an evil, only because of 
 the pains which it produces. Moral good is good only by 
 its tendency to produce physical good. Moral evil is evil, 
 only by its tendency to produce physical evil." 
 
 This geocentric theory of morals, however captivating 
 to some minds by its appeal to the senses, and its air of 
 simplicity, will be found, when closely examined, beset with 
 difficulties of the most formidable kind. It does not really 
 secure that certain and solid footing, to which it sacrifices 
 some of the noblest instincts of the soul. Utility in 
 morals, like fire in the domestic economy, is an excellent 
 servant, but a bad master. Its enthronement as supreme 
 is the destruction of the science which it pretends to adorn 
 and improve. 
 
 The first defect, its merely external character, meets 
 us in the outset of the theory. It deals only with the 
 outward actions themselves, and professes to dispense, 
 almost entirely, with a reference to the inward motives 
 and feelings of the heart. "There is no point," it has been 
 said, "which utilitarian thinkers have taken more pains to 
 illustrate than the difference between motive and inten- 
 tion. The morality of the act depends entirely on the 
 intention, that is, upon what the agent wills to do. The 
 feeling which makes him will so to do, when it makes no 
 difference in the act, makes none in the morality, though 
 it makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the 
 agent." (Mill's Util. p. 27.) 
 
 Here, then, we have an attempt to build a scheme of 
 moral action, from which all respect to the motives of the 
 agent is excluded as a superfluous element. But the 
 attempt is deceptive and vain. Moral elements are need- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 271 
 
 ful to constitute a moral or immoral act, and these ele- 
 ments are to be found in the motives and feelings of the 
 agent, and in these alone. The contrast of motive and 
 intention is only that between a more immediate object, 
 and one more remote. He who intends to do good to 
 another, and harms him in the attempt, may be guilty of 
 a serious wrong. But the wrong thus inflicted is wholly 
 different, in a moral point of view, from similar acts done 
 in deliberate malice. There may be perhaps a criminal 
 rashness, a blind and erring superstition, or a disgraceful 
 ignorance. The act may thus be worthy of moral blame. 
 The laws of the land may sentence it to a just punish- 
 ment. They may even, from the act itself, infer a con- 
 structive malice. But the moral distinction, wide and 
 deep in itself, still remains. The motive is the soul on 
 which the true nature of every act mainly depends. But 
 if there be grievous negligence in forming the judgment, 
 so as to inflict injury where kindness was meant, this 
 fault is a moral evil of another kind. xVnd when this 
 neglect is wilful and aggravated, the man may be justly 
 held responsible, almost as much as for malicious wrong, 
 for evils which his ignorance and rashness may have caused 
 to the objects of a well-meaning, but misguided, thought- 
 less, and perverse benevolence. 
 
 The doctrine, which makes the moral good or evil of 
 actions depend only on their consequences, is open to an 
 objection at the outset of a very fatal kind. Acts, viewed 
 merely as physical changes, can have only physical 
 consequences. A sword is drawn, a pistol is fired, and 
 death ensues. Set aside all reference to the human will, 
 the motive of the agent, and in either case there is a 
 physical result alone. So much matter is moved, slowly 
 qt swiftly, from place to place. Chemical elements enter 
 
272 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 into new combinations. Light, heat, and sound are gene- 
 rated, swift and sudden motion is given to a ball of solid 
 metal, muscles or nerves are shattered, the conditions of 
 vital action are violated, and there is a lifeless corpse, 
 instead of a living man. But in all this there is no moral 
 consequence or result whatever. Once introduce the idea 
 of will and choice, and all is altered. The agent is no 
 longer a mere automaton in a vast engine-house of nature, 
 fall of machines. He has acted rightly or wrongly. He 
 has done good or evil. He has committed an act of law- 
 ful self-defence, or of patriotic effort, or has been guilty 
 of a culpable homicide, or even of a deliberate and mali- 
 cious murder. The motives of the agent, and his relation 
 to the person slain, alone give the act its moral colouring, 
 and render it the fit object of approval or blame. 
 
 All actions are thus morally sterile and unproductive, 
 unless moral features, prior to any later result, are as- 
 sumed and pre-supposed. They can never, when these 
 are wanting, rise above the level of physical changes, 
 morally indifferent. We must recognize in them some 
 working of free choice, of a responsible and intelligent 
 will, of the desire to injure or benefit others, to do good or 
 to do evil. Then the dead corpse receives a new and 
 higher life. They become moral acts, out of which moral 
 consequences without number may be expected to flow. 
 A blow, in itself, is only one insensible element in a vast 
 problem of molecular change and planetary perturbation. 
 But let it be an act of wilful and deliberate insult, and it 
 may lead to some fatal duel, or possibly wrap a whole 
 kingdom in the flames of civil strife, or carry war and de- 
 struction to countless families and unborn generations. 
 
 Again, the moral tendency of actions presupposes and 
 requires moral laws of right and wrong, which affect not 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 273 
 
 the agent only, but those who are the objects of his 
 activity. The phrase sums up briefly all the effects that 
 follow, when injuries or benefits awaken various emotions 
 of gratitude or ingratitude, of indignation, resentment, or 
 forgiveness, in those who have been affected by them. 
 It would be a vain attempt to trace dynamical conse- 
 quences, if we first assume a universe of particles wholly 
 inert, in which the forces of gravitation and cohesion and 
 electric affinity have no power. The persons acted upon 
 must have capacities of moral discernment, before moral 
 results, worthy of the name, can follow. It is the 
 perception, whether true or false, of some moral character 
 in the act, by those whom it directly or remotely 
 affects, on which the nature of the consequences will 
 almost entirely depend. And hence, in a world where 
 ignorance, error, and falsehood prevail, the estimate of 
 actions by their immediate and apparent consequences is 
 liable to be most deceptive. The clouds will hide the sun. 
 The drifting meteors project their own vagrancy, in paral- 
 lax, on the orbs which are stedfast; and virtues which 
 cross the current of popular vice, and awake the oppo- 
 sition and hate of the corrupt and selfish, may be mis- 
 taken, like ancient prophets and apostles, for guilty 
 troublers of society, criminals that turn upside down the 
 peace of the world. 
 
 There is a further disproof of the doctrine that a cal- 
 culation of consequences is the only source of morals, from 
 reflection upon the nature of the calculation itself. It is 
 a moral act, and subject to moral laws. The power to 
 foresee consequences, to remember the results of past 
 experience, to compare and analyse the causes of events, 
 and to trace the probable effects of a particular course on 
 the mind and feelings of others, is a high and noble faculty. 
 
 B. L. 18 
 
274 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 Man did not create it for himself, it is the gift of God. 
 If actions themselves need moral rules to be calculated 
 for them, how much more the faculty by which these 
 calculations are to be made ! But who can learn, by 
 calculating alone, the methods and principles on which 
 all right calculation must depend ? Quis custodiet ipsos 
 custodes I Surely the gift is one of which the exercise 
 needs some guidance, since on its right or wrong perform- 
 ance, by the hypothesis, a life of vice or virtue, of wisdom 
 or guilt and folly, must naturally ensue. 
 
 The doctrine which assumes that pleasures are to be 
 courted simply because they please, and suffering to be 
 avoided simply because it is painful, turns a mere animal 
 instinct into a fundamental rule of moral arithmetic. 
 On what warrant is this rule assumed ? First principles, 
 we are told, must be clear and evident, like the axioms 
 of mathematics. And then it is assumed, in the next 
 paragraph, that pleasures of disease, of vice, and malevo- 
 lence, are to enter into our calculation side by side 
 with the pleasures of Christian piety or social kindness, 
 and must weigh equally in the scale, if their amount 
 or quantity be the same. But a calculation of results, 
 based on such a confusion of moral, opposites, is immoral 
 in its own nature. Instead of founding a system of 
 genuine ethics, it may be said to involve a guilty and 
 fatal apotheosis of vice, disease, and folly. All reckon- 
 ing of moral consequences is the use of a high and no- 
 ble faculty of man's being. It is not a lawless process, 
 to be conducted by the capricious decisions of an erring 
 philosophy, when it confounds or denies distinctions on 
 which the foundations of morality depend. It is subject 
 to laws of moral duty. The pleasures to be compared 
 must be tried by a higher standard than of their 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 2J$ 
 
 seeming intensity alone. Factors introduced by human 
 vice and folly must be thrown aside, since they only tend 
 to lower the tone of thought, and to prevent any true 
 solution of a hard problem. For surely it is no less 
 immoral to accept the diseased pleasures of others, their 
 corrupt and malevolent passions, or their gross and 
 sensual practices, for positive elements to guide my 
 actions by an attempt to increase and enlarge them, 
 than to indulge the like pleasures in my own person. 
 
 Again, the process of calculation, so far as it is lawful 
 and desirable, is subject to limitations of a moral kind. 
 There are cases in which it may be right and wise to delay 
 immediate action, in order to gain a clearer judgment on 
 the course which is best to pursue. But there are many 
 others, in which prompt and immediate action, even with 
 risk of partial mistake, is better than protracted delibera- 
 tion. Now if the moral Tightness of an action depends 
 entirely on a correct estimate of all its consequences, in all 
 such cases to act rightly must be impossible, because the 
 requisite conditions could never be fulfilled. There is a 
 time to speak, and to keep silence. There is also a time 
 to calculate probable results, and a time when it is needful 
 to act promptly and speedily, and long deliberation would 
 be a fatal error. In the great majority of the practical duties 
 of life, it is far better to use our eyes at once, or to correct 
 their known defects with such glasses as are at hand and 
 in constant use, than to spend months and years in con- 
 structing some moral telescope or microscope, which, after 
 all, we may never be able to employ, because the season for 
 action has passed away. When the conscience is well 
 trained, and dwells in an atmosphere of purity and light, 
 it is safer to act on its first and simplest impulses, than to 
 submit them to a process of laborious and intricate calcula- 
 
 18—2 
 
276 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 tion, which may serve, too often, for a chemical freezing 
 mixture to all the warmer emotions and more generous in- 
 stincts of the human heart. 
 
 Actions, then, can have no traceable moral results, un- 
 less moral laws, affecting the agent himself and the objects 
 of his action, are presupposed. They sink to the lower 
 level of a mere physical change, the proper subject 
 neither of praise nor blame. The calculation, if made, must 
 itself be subject to moral laws, and restrained by moral 
 limitations. It is wrong to calculate and plan for the 
 increase of such pleasures in others as it is criminal to 
 indulge in our own person. It is foolish and wrong to go 
 on calculating possible and remote results, when prompt 
 and speedy action is the plain requirement of duty. But 
 the difficulties of the theory are greater still. The calcu- 
 lation of consequences, when set up for the true foundation 
 of morals, and the test of right conduct, is impossible. It 
 is capricious and uncertain in the elements on which it de- 
 pends. In the form in which it has usually been proposed, 
 it is degrading and immoral. And while the professed 
 aim is to gain a clear and intelligible basis for morality, by 
 such a process we sink in miry clay, and can never arrive 
 at firm and solid ground. 
 
 And first, the calculation, viewed on the side of science, 
 is impossible. It requires the summation of an infinite 
 series. And the series is one of which the laws, as bor- 
 rowed from experience only, are so immensely complex, 
 that we cannot be sure even of a rude approach to its 
 total value, by attempting to add together a few of its 
 nearest terms. We cannot tell, by such means, whether it 
 may not prove divergent, so that negative terms of greater 
 amount may render futile our poor attempts to find its ap- 
 proximate value. And the infinity is not of a single, but of 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 277 
 
 a double and triple kind. We have to trace out the 
 results of the proposed action, not for a few hours or 
 days only, but through a whole lifetime, or to distant 
 generations, and throughout the life to come. We have 
 to sum them up, by the theory, not with regard to our- 
 selves alone, but to the whole family of mankind, and 
 even to the countless numbers of generations still unborn. 
 We must further trace them in connection with the im- 
 mense variety of possible pains and pleasures, and their 
 degrees of intensity. Each of the fifteen classes, which 
 Bentham has enumerated, admits clearly of an almost 
 countless diversity, not only in the strength of each con- 
 ceivable form of pain and pleasure, but in the elements 
 out of which they arise, and which must vary, more or 
 less, with the moral antecedent which the problem re- 
 quires us to determine. 
 
 The summation required is not only of an infinite 
 series, with a threefold infinity of time, of persons, and of 
 elements. It is also one of quantities wholly incommen- 
 surable. In geometry we may form a sum of numbers, 
 or of lines, or of surfaces, or of cubical space. But we can- 
 not form a sum of numbers with lines, or of lines with 
 surfaces, or of surfaces with solid space of three dimen- 
 sions. In each case a wide chasm of unlikeness or infini- 
 tude separates the proposed elements from each other. And 
 in the moral problem, as proposed by utilitarian theories, 
 the difficulty is just the same. It is owned, by one of the 
 latest advocates and revisers of the system, that pleasures 
 may differ in quality as well as quantity, and the admis- 
 sion is said to be quite consistent with the maintenance of 
 the general system. The concession is candid and just. 
 But the apology which attends it, for a master and teacher 
 of logic, is most illogical. The essence and foundation of 
 
278 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 the theory is that the Tightness or wrongness of actions 
 must be determined by a summation of all the pains and 
 pleasures which they generate, or to which they lead. 
 But if these pleasures are owned to differ in quality as 
 well as mere amount, the problem is either owned to be 
 impracticable, or else completely changes its form. 
 
 Incommensurables are of two classes. The first is of 
 things of the same kind, when the ratio cannot be strictly 
 given by finite numbers, but we can approach to it as near 
 as we please. In such cases, though scientific exactness is 
 not reached, we can approach nearer and nearer to the truth, 
 and a practical solution is possible. The other case is of 
 things incommensurable in kind, as of lines and surfaces, 
 or surfaces and solids. And here summation is strictly in- 
 conceivable. The gulf cannot be passed, and the only sum- 
 mation possible is by leaving the less important out of the 
 calculation altogether. Now if the animal pleasures of 
 sense, which swine may share, are owned to be distinct in 
 quality from those of reason, thought, and intelligence, 
 which are proper to men, the same principle clearly applies. 
 And again, if the pleasures of lust, of selfish ambition, and 
 of malevolent passion, the first and sixth and ninth in 
 the utilitarian catalogue, are distinct in kind from those of 
 justice, piety, and benevolence, here also a process of 
 mere summation is impossible, and the attempt delusive. 
 The pleasures and joys of a pure conscience are higher 
 and holier than those of mere intellect, where no directly 
 moral element appears ; and these, in their turn, are nobler 
 than mere animal pleasures. Hence it follows that the 
 moral elements of the problem must first be proved to be 
 in equilibrium, before we have any right to compare the 
 merely intellectual gain or loss ; and these, again, must be 
 strictly equal, and disappear from the problem, before we 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 279 
 
 can lawfully introduce the pleasures of sense to turn the 
 scale. Such a conclusion results demonstrably from the 
 concession that is made, and it is fatal to the utilitarian 
 theory. The addition table, before supreme, comes to 
 occupy a very secondary place in this great problem of 
 life; and the old distinctions of higher and lower aims, 
 and the duty of choosing the highest, recognized by the 
 best schools of heathen philosophy, as well as by the 
 maxims of Christian faith, but set aside almost contemptu- 
 ously by some modern writers, vindicate their reality and 
 importance, and stand out in full relief once more. 
 
 But the problem proposed has still another fault, 
 which is incurable. The calculation required is not only 
 of infinites and incommensurables, but also of indetermi- 
 nates. We are called upon to solve an equation of a 
 degree which almost transcends the power of numbers to 
 express, and of which not only the quantity itself to be 
 determined, but nearly all the coefficients by which we 
 must determine it, are unknown. Our calculation is 
 to be of the supposed results of each act, as it will affect 
 the experience of ten thousand thousand moral agents 
 or sentient beings. And first we have to assume, in 
 each instance, that they also calculate a like problem 
 in each successive act, or else that they are guided by 
 impulse, habit, or some lower motive, without calculation. 
 In the former case the problem is clearly insoluble, and 
 the mere attempt to resolve it is a childish folly. Each of 
 a thousand unknown quantities is to be determined, by 
 first assuming all the others to be already known. A is 
 to decide whether a course of conduct is right by its 
 beneficial effect on the experience of all from B to Z. 
 And B, in turn, is to act on a similar calculation of the 
 future feelings and experiences of A, C &c. to Z } as be- 
 
280 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 fore. If we assume that others do not calculate, but act 
 on mere impulse, the difficulty is only increased. We 
 have not merely to determine, in this case, the future 
 course and orbit of ten thousand moral planets, of all 
 degrees of size, and with no common centre, under laws of 
 high complexity ; we have rather to decide, by calcula- 
 tion, the best course for one of the atoms of Epicurus, 
 from the future effects on a wide chaos of like atoms, 
 all assumed to move to and fro by mere caprice, or of 
 which the secret laws for their movements are quite 
 unknown. 
 
 But the calculation has still another fault. Instead 
 of providing a sure and firm foundation on which the 
 science of morals may rest, it builds plainly on the sand. 
 It assumes that, while the voice of conscience may deceive, 
 and common sense be merely a disguised name for des- 
 potic and arbitrary decisions of mere local or transient 
 prejudice, this appeal to pleasures and pains, produced by 
 certain acts, and the attempt to reckon up their amount, 
 can provide us with a clear and fixed standard, free from 
 the parallax and distortion of individual minds. But this 
 is an entire illusion. It is a fact of experience, no doubt, 
 in each case, and for each separate person, that such and 
 such things have been liked and given pleasure, and that 
 such others have been disliked, and caused an emotion of 
 pain. But how many steps have to be taken, before this 
 limited fact can be changed into a basis of scientific, or even 
 of practical and approximate calculation ! The pleasure 
 or pain of the moment passes away, as soon as it has been 
 felt, and can never return. How are we to infer future 
 pleasures, through long years to come, from those of 
 previous days ? The circumstances will not be the same. 
 The scene will have wholly changed. Every person af- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 28 1 
 
 fected by the acts which are still in suspense will be in 
 a different natural, intellectual, moral position, and the 
 change is in progress hourly, even while the deliberation is 
 made. Man, as we have been told long ago by the patri- 
 arch, " never continueth at one stay." The pleasures of in- 
 fancy, of early childhood, of youth and manhood, are not the 
 same. The choice of one is the dislike of another. The 
 preference of to-day is often reversed to-morrow. Fulness 
 breeds satiety. Vicious indulgence perverts the faculties 
 themselves. And thus to build a theory of morals on a 
 process of calculation, which assumes the nature and 
 extent of future pleasures, in ten thousand persons, from 
 our own experience, through a few days or months or 
 years, of pleasures that are now gone for ever, is the same 
 as to rear a stately and imposing structure on a founda- 
 tion of ever-shifting heaps of sand. 
 
 To obtain anything like solid footing, we must turn 
 our thoughts from the mere fact of some past pain or 
 pleasure, of the liking or disliking, enjoyment or suf- 
 fering, to the causes out of which it grows, and on 
 which its recurrence must depend. The pleasure or pain 
 results from a certain relation between the sentient 
 being or the moral agent, and the conditions, natural 
 or moral, in which he is placed. If there be such a 
 thing as a right or wrong state both of body and mind, 
 of natural or moral health, and of natural or moral 
 sickness and disease, then the future pain and enjoyment 
 must depend on both elements, the acts themselves, 
 with their own proper tendencies when perceived by 
 those who are in health, and those abnormal and unnatural 
 results which flow from the presence of disease and 
 moral evil alone. The first step of genuine science must 
 be to distinguish these two elements, instead of blending 
 
282 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 them confusedly together. It must sever between conse- 
 quences which properly belong to the action itself, and 
 those which are due to the disease, ignorance, vice or 
 folly, of those who come within the range of its influence. 
 And when these last have been separated and put aside, 
 as foreign factors which only obscure the real problem, 
 those which remain must be classed under their three 
 main heads, distinct in kind from each other, and also in- 
 capable of being fused into a process of arithmetic, because 
 they are incommensurable. There are the pleasures of 
 bodily health, in the exercise of all the outward senses 
 and corporeal powers; the higher enjoyments of intellect 
 and mental activity; and the highest of all, which include 
 a moral and spiritual element, the delights of a conscience 
 at peace within, and of a heart enlarged with love to 
 mankind, and still tending upward to lose itself in the 
 ocean of a love which is infinite and divine. 
 
 There is one further truth, familiar to every Christian 
 mind, which places an insurmountable barrier in the way 
 of any theory of morals, based upon consequences and 
 results alone. We are thrown at once upon two alterna- 
 tives. We must strive to determine, either the natural 
 tendencies of the action, which may be thwarted and 
 opposed, and partially reversed, by the wrong conduct, the 
 error and ignorance of others, or else the results, which, in 
 the light of former experience, are most likely to follow. 
 If we are to deal only with tendencies, and not actual or 
 probable results, we have then to decide what is the 
 tendency which belongs to the act from its own nature, 
 apart from those deflecting influences from other sources, 
 which may turn it aside from its proper aim. And these 
 tendencies must be of the nature of internal laws or moral 
 forces. They must imply moral features of the act, and 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 283 
 
 depend upon these, and can exist on no other condition. 
 Kindness tends to beget kindness. But if the act of seem- 
 ing kindness ceases to be really kind, the moral power is 
 wanting. If it ceases to be felt as kind, the moral power 
 is there, but ceases for the time to operate, through the 
 ignorance, misconception, or ingratitude, of those from 
 whom thanks are due. Instead of groping our way along 
 the countless terms of an infinite series, we thus detect the 
 secret law on which its development is mainly suspended, 
 though temporary causes may obscure it for a moment, 
 and introduce foreign terms that disguise its nature. 
 To borrow the language of pure science, we deal no longer 
 with the series itself, but with some generating function on 
 which it depends, in which moral features are already 
 present, and where spiritual laws shine out clearly, so as 
 to rule over the consequences which flow from them even 
 to distant generations. 
 
 But if we accept the other alternative, that our aim 
 must be to determine the actual results, and not the ten- 
 dency alone, then the doctrine must be set aside for an 
 opposite reason. The improper results of actions, from 
 the error and vice of others beside the moral agent him- 
 self, are various, confused, and infinite in our actual world. 
 The attempt to trace them out in detail must defy the 
 efforts of the most powerful and intelligent mind. But 
 the process fails in another way. The world, in the faith 
 of the Christian, and of every Theist, is not abandoned to 
 chance or fate. It is under a scheme of moral govern- 
 ment. The actions, then, of evil men are overruled by an 
 Almighty Power. They are thus compelled, even against 
 their own tendency, to minister to some great and worthy 
 end of the Divine government. 
 
284 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 Astronomy has supplied us, of late, with an expressive 
 illustration and parable of this great moral truth. The 
 comets, those wandering and unformed stars, like truants 
 of our system, have been seen repeatedly, as they ap- 
 proach the sun, to suffer violent agitation. Jets of vapor- 
 ous light have been thrown out from them, as if in weak 
 rivalry or vain defiance of the mighty luminary which 
 controls their motion. But these, however violent their 
 agitation, are soon turned backward by a mightier force 
 than caused their first eruption, and only increase the 
 magnificence of the spectacle, while the whole obeys the 
 central force that draws it nearer and nearer to the sun. 
 So all evil actions, in their own proper tendency, seem to 
 fight with the order and laws of the Divine government, 
 and threaten to reverse them. They burst forth, in the 
 form of violent and hateful passions and appetites, from 
 that weak and errant centre of evil thoughts in which 
 they are born, the human heart. But no sooner do they 
 escape, and enter on the vast open range of Providence, 
 than a mightier Power seizes upon them, in spite of their 
 reluctance and opposition, and compels them to do its 
 will. They no longer obey the impulse of the evil pas- 
 sion in which they had their birth, but are strangely over- 
 ruled by far-reaching might and far-seeing wisdom, and 
 minister to the action and abiding dominion of All-perfect 
 Love. 
 
 Now this great fact, dimly taught even by natural 
 reason, and more clearly revealed in the whole course of 
 Scripture, that evil is overruled for good, and that nothing 
 can escape from the counsel of One who is infinite in wis- 
 dom and goodness, destroys all contrast between good and 
 evil actions, as soon as we adopt the false principle which 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. ' 285 
 
 would decide on their character by actual results and 
 consequences alone. In this sense the words of the poet 
 are true : 
 
 All discord, harmony not understood, 
 All partial evil, universal good. 
 
 All good actions, in their own nature, tend to results 
 which are good. And this tendency, inherent in them 
 from their moral nature, is ripened and perfected by the 
 concurrent action of a superintending providence. All 
 evil actions, in their own nature, tend to evil. But this 
 evil, the result of their moral nature in the hour of their 
 birth, is so controlled by that higher law of Divine 
 wisdom, under control of which they come as soon as they 
 are born, that they also lead to actual issues worthy of 
 Him whose decrees they fulfil, 
 
 Whose work is without labour, whose designs 
 No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts. 
 
 How, then, can it be possible to discriminate the moral 
 character of actions by their outward results, when all 
 alike, though in a manner deeply mysterious, are known 
 to minister to a work which is perfect; and when God was 
 pleased to accomplish, by means of an act which on man's 
 part was one of the worst and foulest crimes, His own 
 good and excellent purpose, the redemption and spiritual 
 recovery of a sinful and evil world ? 
 
 When, however, instead of making the tendencies of 
 actions, which is a silent paralogism, or their actual results, 
 which is a fatal error, the ground of their moral nature 
 for good or evil, we use the lessons of experience as a 
 secondary guide for settling the wisest forms and true 
 limits of human law, then the principle of utility, so applied 
 and limited, must hold an important place in all applied 
 JSthics, and needs to be. borne in view by all those who 
 
286 THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 
 
 have to frame laws for the guidance of human society. 
 Or when we rise still higher, to contemplate the Pro- 
 vidence of God and the great system of His moral govern- 
 ment on a wider scale, and seek to define good and 
 evil by the harmony and consent of all those contrasted 
 elements on which their nature depends, the principle 
 holds a place of still higher importance. We cannot sever 
 actions from their consequences. If the tree be good, 
 its fruit will be good, and if the tree be corrupt and evil, 
 so must be the fruit also. A perfection, wholly apart 
 from consequences and effects of every kind, is incon- 
 ceivable. 
 
 Actions that are really good must have a threefold 
 character. They must be good in the fountain from 
 which they spring, the channel through which they flow, 
 and the ocean to which they tend. They must be con- 
 formed, in their origin, to eternal laws of righteousness, on 
 harmony with which their real character depends. They 
 must be in harmony with a pure and upright conscience, 
 which recognizes the law of right, and strives to obey it. 
 And they must tend naturally, in their later progress, to 
 reproduce themselves. They are moral plants, endued 
 with a prolific virtue, and of each of them it may be said 
 with perfect truth, that " its seed is in itself upon the 
 earth." 
 
 Heroic virtue wakens emulation in noble minds. Holy 
 examples awaken the desire and thirst for holiness. Right- 
 eous government kindles instincts of justice, and diffuses 
 them through the whole nation. Kindness breeds kindness, 
 and love is the fruitful parent of love. And though 
 actions could have no moral tendencies, if ethical dis- 
 tinctions were set aside in the vain search after some 
 simpler theory, and right or wrong doing were to be 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF UTILITY. 287 
 
 defined by visible success, and measurable results alone, 
 still it is often through careful observation of results that 
 our perception of their moral nature becomes more full 
 and clear. Like sunlight reflected from the countless 
 dewdrops of morning, the laws of righteousness, while 
 they can gain no new force, shine with more conspicuous 
 beauty, when they are seen in their combination with 
 all the innumerable events of Providence and human 
 history in this lower world. Actions do not assume a 
 moral character, and become right or wrong, purely 
 because of the results that follow after them in the near 
 or distant future. But the great fact of an all-wise 
 Providence secures that, soon or late, their moral tendency, 
 from their own nature, shall prevail over every adverse 
 and evil influence; — "so that men shall say, Verily there 
 is a reward for the righteous : doubtless there is a God 
 that judge th in the earth." 
 
THE ANALOGY 
 
 OF 
 
 MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY, 
 
 QL GTommem oration JjMje 3cs*$ag 
 
 READ IN TEINITY COLLEGE CHAPEL, 
 DECEMBER, 1833. 
 
 B. L. 19 
 
AN ESSAY 
 
 MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 
 
 Among the votaries of Mathematical Science there havj 
 never been wanting voices to celebrate largely its numer- 
 ous excellencies. The simplicity of its principles, the 
 variety of its results, the certainty of its demonstrations, 
 the beauty and harmony of its truths, and its wide com- 
 mand over the secrets of external nature, have all in their 
 turn been the themes of frequent eulogy. Regarding it 
 as the parent region of discovery, not only its native 
 children, but many of the sons of tributary sciences, have 
 been ready to pay their homage to its superior claims. 
 By all who have journeyed in quest of physical truth its 
 praises have often been sung, as mistress of those winding 
 seas they have had to traverse; and in the unknown 
 lands of science which have risen on their view, its flag 
 has been the first to wave in triumph upon every shore. 
 Others have claimed for it a higher merit; they have 
 enlarged, and justly, on its influence upon the mind itself 
 — on the habits it tends to induce of connected reasoning 
 and patient thought — the strict rein it places on the loose 
 wanderings of the fancy, and that stern discipline of the 
 mental powers, which nerves them equally, whether with 
 strength for the combat, or with swiftness for the race. 
 
 19—2 
 
292 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 But here the topics of praise seem to be exhausted, 
 and the strain, so full hitherto, dies away suddenly on the 
 strings. To those, who, deaf to its lower claims, inquire 
 into its moral virtues ; who adhere to the golden rule of 
 the reviver of philosophy, and measure the value of 
 science, not by the false standard of that power over the 
 elements, which spirits of darkness may wield as well as 
 spirits of light, but by its use in the conduct of life ; who 
 ask, what higher truth it even indirectly teaches, what 
 light it sheds on the mysteries of our being, what lessons 
 of wisdom it has power to furnish, what sympathies to 
 cherish, what kindly affections to revive, what lofty pur- 
 poses of excellence to animate and sustain, the reply, if 
 any reply be given, is faint and low. Its more just and 
 candid admirers will excuse, perhaps, by the greatness of 
 its other merits, its defect in these, as alien from its 
 nature ; while some of a bolder school, the idolaters of 
 science, who dream that wisdom itself may in time be 
 reduced to a formula, and virtue to a refined and subtle 
 problem of chance, will treat the inquiry with contempt 
 and silent scorn. The truth, however, of the charge would 
 probably be at once admitted by both ; and while all other 
 fields of natural knowledge, to those who have learned to 
 pursue them aright, yield in abundance the fruits of lofty 
 poetry and of heavenly contemplation, it seems to be 
 deemed utterly hopeless that any such plants of Paradise 
 should be reared in this primitive region of granite rock 
 and eternal snow. 
 
 The source of this wide-spread impression seems to 
 lie in the opinion, which has taken deep root, of an entire 
 contrast between the nature of mathematical and moral 
 truth. They have been generally viewed as not more 
 separate in their objects than in the kind of evidence on 
 
-MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 293 
 
 which they severally rest. The claim of demonstrable 
 certainty has been granted to the former alone, while the 
 latter has been placed on the looser ground of induction 
 and cumulative proof. The great and leading distinction, 
 which obtains, by a close analogy, in things moral as well 
 as natural, between facts and truths, the floating pheno- 
 mena apprehended by the senses, and the fixed laws or 
 ideas contemplated by the reason, has been transferred, 
 by a strange confusion of terms, if not of thought, to the 
 subjects themselves, till the very phrase, ' moral certainty,' 
 has come to denote what is in some measure uncertain, 
 and not capable from its nature of the strictness of de- 
 monstration. Between things regarded as so different in 
 kind it is no wonder that little analogy should be felt to 
 obtain. On this view the only lesson that could be drawn 
 from the truths of science was one of contrast, to seek for 
 such evidence only in moral subjects, as their nature 
 admits; to balance where we cannot prove, to creep where 
 we may not soar, and steer our winding course along the 
 coasts of experience, where there is no fixed loadstar seen, 
 to guide us freelv across the trackless ocean. 
 
 There is something in this opinion, when entertained, 
 which must, to a reflecting mind, suggest itself at once as 
 strange and unnatural. Is it possible, then, that nature, 
 which in every other province has a temple, an oracle^ 
 and a voice of wisdom, in this alone, the highest of all, 
 is mute and silent ? Her smaller streams and fountains, 
 amidst their perpetual dance and play, may be seen lit 
 up continually with the beams of some loftier truth ; and 
 this ocean, wide as space, and lasting as time, which en- 
 circles and sustains every realm of the universe with its 
 vast and eternal laws — has this alone no clear heavens 
 bending over it, whose image it may reflect in its deep 
 
294 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 and tranquil bosom? Is Truth, as distinguished from 
 Presumption, her shadow, to be exiled from the spirit of 
 man, and the nobler aims and purposes of his being, to 
 seek an uneasy shelter, entrenched within the lines of the 
 geometer, or couched in mystic retreat beneath the letters 
 of the analyst, there to busy herself with many things, 
 and all needless, ministering only to bodily convenience,, 
 and outward luxury and ease. 
 
 Let us briefly inquire, then, whether we may not with 
 safety take a nobler view ; whether, in examining into the 
 nature of moral certainty, we may not find, in the certainty 
 of geometry, an attendant to guide us, instead of a rival 
 to discourage ; whether we may not rest their claims on 
 a common footing ; observing only that along with the 
 mental discipline they both require, in the former a moral 
 discipline is further needed, answerable to its greater 
 dignity ; and thus rise to the conviction that, in the range 
 of moral as of natural truth, there is no need to be tossed 
 on the uncertain waves of opinion, but that in each alike 
 there are principles to be found, fixed and sure in them- 
 selves, and whose light streams far into the caverns of 
 nature, and the still more unfathomable depths of the 
 human heart. An^l although the remoteness of this view 
 from those of the schools of modern philosophy, with 
 a few bright exceptions, may give it the air of paradox, 
 it is not on that account the less likely to be true. For 
 what is paradox, indeed, but another name for that deepest 
 truth, which veils itself from a passing and careless gaze 
 in the inner shrine of this world's solemn temple ? 
 
 At the very entrance, however, of our comparison, 
 a host of difficulties encompass us, and threaten to ob- 
 struct our path, like the clamorous shapes which beset 
 the knight of old, when forcing his toilsome way to the 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 295 
 
 palace of Truth. Their form and voice may be various, 
 but their challenge is the same ; and as they point to the 
 countless train of varying thoughts, adverse schools, con- 
 tending creeds, and clashing opinions, they ask with 
 triumph where are the signs of this fancied certaint} , the 
 doctrines of this science, the waymarks of its progress, 
 and the treasury of its results ; and setting before us the 
 trophies of physical research, demand an equally undis- 
 puted array of moral and spiritual discoveries. 
 
 It cannot be denied that, at first sight, this difficulty 
 seems great and almost insurmountable. The analogy 
 appears buried under a total contrast. And so it must 
 appear, as long as the eye rests only on the passing sur- 
 face, unmindful of the still deeps of thought that are 
 slumbering below. To such an observer, and such are 
 most, the history of the world presents only a waste of 
 opinions, where wave and tide and current blend their 
 effects confusedly, hopeless to the feet, and cheerless to 
 the view. And even when the voice of Truth is heard to 
 welcome him amidst its waves, his spirit must be calm 
 and his faith be strong, who can walk forth in thought, 
 without some secret misgiving, over this wide and wilder- 
 ing sea. Yet, however formidable the difficulty may ap- 
 pear at first, further reflection will greatly weaken its 
 force, and supply us with a double answer, resting in part 
 on the analogy in question, and partly on the difference 
 between the circumstances of scientific and moral re- 
 search. 
 
 Let ns suppose the case of a simple observer of the 
 heavens, a Chaldean shepherd on the plains of Dura, who 
 had watched night by night, the moon, the planets, and 
 the starry courses ; and that in the midst of his laborious 
 observation, still finding fresh aspects in the ever-moving 
 
296 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 sphere, he were told that all these varied appearances 
 were linked by one simple law, from which they might be 
 deduced with infallible certainty. We may imagine how 
 he would start at such a statement, how he would appeal 
 to their complex and still varying motions ; and gazing on 
 the mystic dance of those wandering fires, "excentric, 
 intervolved" — be ready to seat some wayward Genius in 
 each separate sphere, and hard would be it to persuade 
 him that they were " regular then most, when most ir- 
 regular they seem." But if by comparing with other 
 observers, he were to learn that with each the appearances 
 were different — that stars which to him rose and set con- 
 tinually, by another were never seen, and with a third 
 were circling as constantly, unwet by the ocean wave, the 
 discordance of the appearances with every observer would 
 appear to give him a tenfold warrant for rejecting the 
 statement altogether, as rash and visionary. 
 
 Thus it fares with higher truth. Habit and prejudice, 
 the pride of intellect, and a selfish will, furnish to every 
 man a continual parallax of thought; and till these are 
 taken away, or account is had of their presence, we need 
 not wonder that the results appear discordant, and no 
 light of certainty pierces through the gloom. Remove 
 these, and what before appeared the most complex may 
 be found perhaps the most simple. In this view it is 
 worthy of notice that the first triumph of applied analysis 
 has been over those bodies, whose very name marked 
 them out to us as truant wanderers in the sky. And if 
 Light, the playmate of the changing clouds, be the next 
 to bow to that potent spell, what presumption can here- 
 after be raised, from the complex and tremulous emotions 
 of the heart, the web of opinions, or the tangled maze of 
 the world's history, against the simplicity of those eternal 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 297 
 
 truths on which the whole scheme reposes, or the sureness 
 of the building reared on those foundations ? 
 
 There is, however, a further key to this apparent 
 contrast. The geometer never dreams of discovering 
 afresh the whole train of science : he receives it advanced 
 by the united labors of all who have gone before, and 
 seeks only to supply what may be wanting, or explain 
 what may be obscure, and so to pass on to further 
 discoveries. He would smile at any one, who would 
 advise him to ensure freedom from prejudice, by fling- 
 ing aside the treasures that others have left, and raise 
 the structure afresh by his own unaided powers. If this 
 had been the course pursued by even the most favoured 
 sons of Science, the walls on which she now han^s their 
 trophies would still have been bare. Yet something like 
 this has been too often advised, and too often practised, 
 in themes of far more difficulty and moment, and it is no 
 wonder that the progress, in such cases, should appear 
 small and uncertain. 
 
 Above all, the difference lies mainly in the number of 
 willing learners, rather than in the subjects themselves. 
 There is something in the pursuit of pure science not 
 a little flattering to the mind, and tending to leave on it 
 a simple impression of its own power. With moral truth 
 it is the reverse ; it humbles that it may exalt, and re- 
 proves first, in order to restore. There is a sacrifice 
 always involved in its reception, a surrender of selfish 
 desires, a deadness to passing pleasures, which bars the 
 avenues of its approach, though it only confirms it the 
 more when once received. This, while detracting nothing 
 from its intrinsic certainty, which it rather doubles by the 
 joint testimony of the judgment and the will, clouds 
 greatly the marks of its evidence from the superficial eye. 
 
298 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 Thus many turn altogether from its portals ; and even 
 with those who enter in, it is frequently only after laying 
 afresh, in their own experience, the foundation of a wisdom 
 taught and proved long before. 
 
 It is true that this view of Moral Science, as in its 
 own nature fixed and sure, like the laws of number or of 
 space, however familiar with our elder writers, and ably 
 sustained by some kindred spirits in our own day, accords 
 ill with the stream of modern opinion, or the self-flatteries 
 of an age, which, whatever may be its other intellectual 
 claims, shews small signs of the unity which springs from 
 conscious truth, or the meekness of a pure and living 
 wisdom. And while its merely physical students or ephe- 
 meral writers keep within their proper bounds, they may 
 well be borne with, and even justly admired. But if they 
 would intrude, with insect doubts, into the still chambers 
 of meditation and faith, to question the existence and 
 reality of that higher knowledge, which they may never 
 have sought for, and therefore have never found, their 
 pretensions must be examined, and the intrusion repelled. 
 And it may easily be seen that the causes which obscure 
 the evidence of moral truth, though always acting, act 
 most strongly in times of intellectual excitement and 
 social luxury. 
 
 We may observe then, first, that a state of accumulated 
 facts, multiplied opinions, enlarged materials of thought, 
 diffused intelligence, and various reading, is of itself the 
 most unfavourable to fixedness of views, and manliness of 
 character, unless it be attended with an answering depth 
 of inward research and silent meditation. Truth, and the 
 facts which it knits together and explains, like law and 
 its subjects in the social state, or flesh and spirit in man's 
 mysterious being, are of themselves antagonist prin- 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 299 
 
 ciples ; noblest indeed in their union, but still that very 
 union is not effected without a struggle, and the harmony 
 which results partakes always the nature of a triumph. 
 The appearances which flit around us in every field of 
 nature are of themselves a vagrant and lawless band, till 
 the idea, in full panoply, springs to birth in some master- 
 mind, which may reduce into unwilling obedience their 
 roving and scattered tribes. And hence, in every case, 
 the greater the amount of facts amassed, before a sound 
 theory has arisen to explain them, the greater the ob- 
 stacles which such a theory will have to encounter. The 
 only reason why this is not perceived more commonly, is, 
 that facts and theory usually grow up side by side, and 
 advance together towards perfection. But if, as in the 
 formation of opinions on moral subjects, where the exer- 
 cise of a private judgment, though sincere in its search, 
 will too often set aside authority both human and divine, 
 principles have to be formed and matured amidst the 
 pressure and excitement of intellect, in its most busy and 
 active forms, then the difficulty exists in all its power. 
 To persuade this moving and infinite world of thought 
 to own the jurisdiction, and bow to the authority of a 
 higher law, fixed and stable as those of number and space, 
 is a task which grows the more arduous, the more populous 
 that empire of thought becomes. Let us suppose no 
 longer a shepherd on the plains, but a modern observer of 
 the heavens, who had collected the observations of former 
 astronomers, and added his own, with every refinement of 
 minutest accuracy, before the first dawn of a true theory. 
 It is plain that with such a person the difficulties, which 
 a later Kepler or Newton would have had to encounter, 
 would be far greater than those which met them at the 
 time when they actually appeared. Few and loose com- 
 
300 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 paratively as were the materials then, and rapid as the 
 advance of science had been in the preceding century, 
 the latter had to task its power to the utmost, to achieve 
 that first great victory, in the natural world, of law over 
 experience, and reason over the illusions of sense. How 
 much harder would it have afterwards become, when a 
 thousand disturbances then unnoticed and unmeasured, 
 rebel genii of air and earth and heaven, would have been 
 added to the array, and have seemed to mock every effort 
 to bring them under the yoke of theory ! And perhaps 
 at last the results themselves might perish, from the want 
 of any principle to knit them into union, and give them 
 a voice prophetic of future changes. 
 
 This, which is true of the laws of matter, is true also 
 of the laws of mind. Each alike has its region of pure 
 and applied science, the one, sure in itself, and the other 
 scarce less so, while by the aid of some simple fact as- 
 sumed, it explains, in strict consequence, the varied forms 
 of nature, and the forms, as various, of providence and of 
 human life. And it can be no presumption against the 
 equal evidence attainable in the latter case, that it may 
 seem to be seldom reached, even in an age of great mental 
 development. The man of various reading, if a man of 
 various reading only, — the able and practised statesman, 
 if versed only in the subtleties of state affairs, the traveller 
 in many climes, if his own heart and conscience have been 
 left unvisited, the citizen of the world in every form, if 
 a citizen of this world alone, is the least likely to appre- 
 hend the evidence, realize the depth, or trace the far- 
 spreading consequences, of those laws of judgment and 
 righteousness, which are the foundation even of the throne 
 of God. Every rule in their mind is clogged with ex- 
 ceptions, which leave it worthless, every maxim with 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 301 
 
 questions and doubts which destroy its power ; and each 
 guiding star, that might beam down benignant influence, 
 meets there with some gross medium of earth, to distort 
 at least, and perhaps entirely to quench its ray. And 
 thus an intellectual age, from the multitude and weight 
 of its materials of outward knowledge, is only in danger 
 of sinking the deeper into the quicksands of scepticism 
 and doubt on every truth of the conscience and reason, 
 beyond the boundary-walls of time. On the first whisper 
 that here too the certainty of demonstration may be 
 gained — the troops of its jarring opinions, which, under 
 their several factions, have striven long and in vain for 
 mastery, muster at once on their frontiers to resent this 
 intrusion of glimmering light into regions sacred to strife 
 and dusky gloom. Freed then, in some measure, from the 
 fear of this objection, which flings its shadow across our 
 path, we may pursue our inquiry with less doubt of suc- 
 cess, and trace rapidly the leading steps of demonstration 
 in either case, illustrating by comparison the difficulties 
 that arise as we proceed. 
 
 Every stream must have its fountain, and every course 
 of demonstration some higher principle, out of which it 
 springs. These, which are the dpxal of Aristotelian philo- 
 sophy, form the root of science — the postulates with 
 which all reasoning begins, and without which, indeed, 
 a single step cannot be taken. They are of two kinds, 
 primitive, or dependent; according as they spring from 
 the intuitive laws of thought, or are the result of a 
 laborious induction. The former are the source of pure, 
 the latter of mixed science, and the certainty to which 
 they tend may in like manner be termed pure or mixed, 
 as the principles on which it rests are absolute or depen- 
 dent. That amusing travesty of logical forms, which 
 
302 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 Dr Brown has copied from Pope to raise our mirth at the 
 Stagyrite's expense, contains in it, as with ridicule is often 
 the case, the germs of a deeper wisdom than either seems 
 to have suspected. Truths, as language itself may teach, 
 have their families, their order and succession, their 
 parentage and their offspring : the child cannot usurp the 
 place of the parent, nor the parent of the child. Unlike 
 the shadowy forms of mere opinion, they are endued with 
 an intense vitality, and their incorruptible life multiplies 
 itself a thousand fold. But as there can be no family 
 without its patriarch, and no race without its founder, 
 whose breath of life is the immediate gift of heaven, so 
 have all the applied sciences their respective parent 
 truths, and the pure science from which they spring its 
 intuitive principles undemonstrated and underived. And 
 thus is man taught everywhere the same lesson of look- 
 ing upward, and the only tenure by which he can till 
 the fields of science, is the silent acknowledgment that 
 Mystery is empress of the soil. 
 
 Overlooking, or strangely forgetting this simple and 
 evident maxim, some writers on mental philosophy have 
 perplexed themselves at the very threshold of their in- 
 quiries, one class attempting to set aside as incapable of 
 proof, and others as idly seeking to prove, principles, 
 which, whether they were willing or not, they were com- 
 pelled silently to recognize in every page. And perhaps 
 even the labour might have been spared, however ingeni- 
 ous, which others have spent in proving that no proof is 
 needed, and that the lecturer may safely assume the 
 mental identity and bodily presence of those whom he 
 is addressing. Discussions of this kind of themselves may 
 seem curious and harmless ; but the habit they foster of 
 questioning what is unquestionable, and perplexing the 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 303 
 
 consciousness with the attempt to contradict itself, tends 
 greatly to induce a palsy of the soul ; in which it grasps 
 no truth fiqaly, has nerve for no manly purpose, but 
 trembles With k' general uneasiness of doubt ; and the 
 sense of duty is lulled asleep, while it is gravely resolving 
 the question of its own existence, and of the living, 
 moving world around it. 
 
 The principle, then, which lies at the basis of mathe- 
 matical science, is this consciousness, which our senses 
 furnish, of the existence of an outward and material 
 world. On this simple postulate, it rears its various dis- 
 coveries. Thought and reflection may suggest on this 
 subject numerous inquiries ; many curious, and some per- 
 plexing questions may be started, on the process by which 
 the mind learns to clothe one object with the perceptions 
 gleaned from differing senses. But these inquiries can 
 never shake, nor even modify the conviction itself. It is 
 just as strong in the sceptic philosopher, who strives to 
 melt away his own consciousness in a deliquium of ideas, 
 as in the merest peasant, and thus gives us a sure footing 
 on which to rest in every further course of reasoning. 
 
 And yet this conviction, however simple and sure, may 
 serve to remove the objections which have sometimes pre- 
 sented themselves in the parallel case of moral conscious- 
 ness. For it is one which we hold in spite of many 
 seeming difficulties. Even in the fields of nature, and, 
 still more, in the chambers of art, we meet with visual 
 images that mock us with an unreal form ; and sleep too 
 has its own world, filled with sights of beauty that own 
 no outward archetype, and vocal with sounds of love or 
 friendship that were never uttered. 
 
 All moral science, in like manner, springs from a 
 fountain- truth, as simple, and even more deep in its in- 
 
304 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 tuitive certainty— the inward consciousness of Will, and 
 that fixed sense of responsible being, which at once pro- 
 claims the soul a denizen of the world of spirits. It is, 
 like the former, a primary law of thought, which needs 
 no proof and requires no comment, but has its quiet and 
 undisturbed abode in the inmost chambers of the heart. 
 It embodies itself in the pronouns of every language, 
 breathes in every desire of the soul, lives in the memories 
 of the past and hopes of the future ; and its voice is 
 heard with equal clearness, in the infant's lisping con- 
 fession, or whispered prayer on its mother's knee, as in 
 the profound est maxims of grave and hoary wisdom. 
 
 It is true that here also there are difficulties, which 
 only patient reflection can overcome, and which shade the 
 truth though it will not suffer itself to be buried. Even 
 when in its most wakeful hours and purest contempla- 
 tions, the mind may sometimes gaze, Narcissus-like, on 
 the images of its own creative fancy, till it is ready to 
 confound the shadowy with the true. Still worse, the soul 
 too has its sleep, and like the hero of Italian song, in the 
 enchanted isle of pleasure, with witcheries of delusion on 
 every side, lies too often a dreaming and inglorious cap- 
 tive, deaf to the sounds of wisdom, and dead to the visions 
 of immortality, that solicit an entrance to its ear and its 
 eye. In such a case, it would be as vain to look for. any 
 certain discernment of moral truth, or any clear insight 
 into its lessons, as to expect the theorems of geometry to 
 evolve themselves spontaneously in the slumbers of the 
 peasant. Rather may we well imagine that a dim and 
 uncertain haze will creep gradually over the whole sub- 
 ject, till first principles themselves are obscured, and a 
 darkened understanding 'makes one blot of all the air/ 
 with its subtle spells. As one who has long been drugged 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 305 
 
 with opiates, and seldom opened his eyes to the light 
 of day, might almost learn to doubt the evidence of his 
 waking senses ; so by such dreamers as these the very 
 existence of moral distinctions, of right and wrong, of good 
 and evil, comes at last to be mooted. Yet even here, the 
 unconquerable majesty of Truth asserts its power. In the 
 midnight haunts of dissipation, where riot holds its loudest 
 orgies of uneasy laughter and hollow mirth, the roar and 
 revelry will sometimes be hushed and still, and a voice be 
 heard of clear and solemn music, that bespeaks something 
 nobler than ' any mortal mixture of earth's mould ' — the 
 plaining of a spirit parted from its guide, and lost in the 
 entangling wildernesses of the world. 
 
 There is no reason, then, in the nature of its first prin- 
 ciples why the evidence of morals should be placed on 
 a lower footing, or regarded as less purely demonstrative, 
 than that of geometry. Each rests on its own firm and 
 simple basis, in the instincts and intuition of sense and of 
 conscience; and their difficulties are similar, though not 
 impairing the certainty in either case, for sense has its 
 illusions, and conscience may often be obscured with 
 clouds. With advancing knowledge, however, these diffi- 
 culties, which were perplexing or startling at an earlier 
 stage, yield fresh confirmation to the realities, which they 
 seemed before to involve in doubt. The distorted vision, 
 and spectral image, are thus traced to the same laws of 
 light, which serve to link us with outward matter ; and 
 false and varying standards of human morality confirm us 
 the more in that which is pure and divine, when once we 
 have learned the mysterious power of a fallen will, to 
 bend with its mist the light of conscience from that un- 
 broken course which it holds in mild regions of serene and 
 heavenly contemplation. 
 
 B.L. 20 
 
306 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 When, indeed, we pass from the nature of Moral 
 Science in itself to its practical reception and growth, we 
 can scarcely allow too largely for this last influence. The 
 doctrine that belief is unconnected with the will may pass 
 current with those whose horizon is bounded by the rules 
 of arithmetic; in moral subjects it will not hold. And 
 hence it arises that the outward marks of certainty or 
 progression are, to the casual observer, so widely different 
 from those of natural science. The strong sense of this 
 actual disparity, has perhaps led a well-known living 
 author, in his aphorisms, in some degree to overstate the 
 real distinction, when he says: "The postulates of Geo- 
 metry are such as no man can deny; the postulates of 
 Moral Science such as no good man will" And this is the 
 view which does seem most directly to suggest itself, upon 
 observation of the wayward forms of human thought ; but 
 perhaps a closer reflection would lead us rather to state 
 the difference thus — that the postulates of Geometry, no 
 one denies or wishes to deny — those of Moral Science, 
 they who wish it most earnestly cannot always. This 
 view will explain the practical distinction as fully as the 
 former, and the parallel is seen to hold with undiminished 
 clearness. 
 
 In pursuing the course of demonstration, the next step 
 is to separate the abstract relations which present them- 
 selves from the varying circumstances in which they are 
 involved. To effect this, simple and precise definition is 
 required. And here the need of patient attention begins 
 to be felt, and we tread close on the verge of mystery. 
 We have now to contemplate the relations of space, apart 
 from the forms of matter, by which space itself becomes 
 known to us, and the nature of number, distinct from 
 the qualities of those units by which our ideas of number 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 307 
 
 have been gained. The figures defined by Geometry can- 
 not be viewed as merely states of the mind, without losing 
 their objective character; and yet we" cannot ascribe to 
 them objective existence, without encumbering the idea 
 with the addition of specific size. They seem rather to 
 be viewed as the expression of general relations which 
 the mind apprehends in external objects — relations fixed 
 and unchanging, though the objects vary, and which the 
 thoughts invest with a subjective or ideal unity. But 
 though the process is not the most easy to explain, it is 
 one which every mind, whose attention has been closely 
 fixed, pursues naturally, and without difficulty. And when 
 once the relation, whatever it be, has been strictly defined, 
 its properties are felt to depend no longer on the object or 
 diagram that may aid our conception, but to be conclusions 
 of pure reason, resting solely on what the terms of the 
 definition include. 
 
 The path which opens into the fields of ethical know- 
 ledge is of the same kind. The actions of human life, the 
 varied emotions of the heart, and all the shifting scenes 
 of thought and passion, are set before us; and the first 
 impression, as in the natural world, is that of a multitude 
 that distracts, and an immensity that confounds. The 
 unthinking turn away discouraged, and live, as the rustic 
 amidst the scenes of nature, but with a more dangerous 
 ignorance — convenience or custom their only guide, their 
 thoughts cooped always within the little horizon of their 
 own narrow aims ; and if ever they raise their eyes, as at 
 times they must, to the blue heavens, yet soon turning 
 them down again to earth, contented strangers to the 
 meaning of all those high mysteries, whose silent majesty 
 is encircling them evermore. But those who with per- 
 severing attention continue to gaze, will ere long perceive 
 
 20—2 
 
308 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 ideas of the good, the fair, the lovely, and the pure, offer- 
 ing themselves unbidden to the view, and amidst the in- 
 numerable play of life's changing scenes, rising, like the 
 nymphs from the countless rippling of the ocean waves, 
 in forms of immortal and unfading beauty. And though 
 writers of an older school, whose thoughts dwelt much 
 and long in this sphere of contemplation, have naturally 
 used words answering to the vividness of their own im- 
 pressions, and spoken of good and evil, of vice or virtue, 
 in terms that might imply a separate actual existence, it 
 would be wrong on that account to charge them with 
 entangling themselves in the empty fictions of a creative 
 fancy. Language, in spite of ourselves, will clothe the 
 most abstract thought with some floating drapery; and 
 the same objection which would discard the certainty of 
 moral relations, or dim the impression of their simple 
 power, because always enveloped in varying circum- 
 stances, must fling aside the conclusions of the geometer, 
 till he can set an abstract triangle or circle before our 
 eyes. 
 
 It is in this stage of comparison, that the inquiry into 
 the source and character of moral distinctions, which has 
 employed so many writers, and been the theme of so 
 many discussions, ancient and modern, would naturally 
 present itself to our notice. For the practical guidance 
 of life, the inquiry is happily superfluous : this temple, 
 sacred to the charities and the graces, will not be less sure 
 for the feet, or less goodly to the eye,. because its founda- 
 tions may be concealed in the bosom of the earth. Con- 
 science has its voice for every ear that is open to receive 
 it, and misleads none, who have not first been more or 
 less willing to be deceived. But still the subject is in 
 itself one of the greatest interest, and especially after 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 309 
 
 furnishing the theme for such various disputes and not 
 a few specious falsehoods, a just view of its nature may- 
 be deemed almost the first essential for all who would 
 pass beyond the sphere of individual action and accept 
 the more perilous orifice of the championship of truth, and 
 vindication of the ways of Providence. Of secondary- 
 aids in pursuing this research, there is perhaps none so 
 sure and simple as the light which arises from keeping 
 the present analogy steadily in view. To attempt this 
 generally, would lead us too far; it may be enough to 
 illustrate briefly in a single instance ; and the philoso- 
 phical lectures of a recent author (Dr T. Brown) as among 
 the latest who have treated the subject, may serve as 
 a ground for the observation. 
 
 Agreeing then, with that luminous writer in most of 
 his statements, there is one principle in which he appears 
 to be still defective, and the error, though less obvious in 
 its consequences, to be as truly dangerous as those which 
 he has opposed. Laying his foundation more deeply than 
 some of his immediate precursors, he had yet to dig 
 a course deeper to find the rock on which the building 
 might rest securely. He has swept aside with a masterly 
 hand the cobwebs of the selfish theories — those fair- 
 seeming Florimels of ice and snow, which but for the 
 charmed girdle that subtle thought had placed around 
 them, the first warm feeling of the heart would have 
 melted away. He has further remarked that selfishness 
 loses nothing of its nature by reaching from time into 
 eternity, and seems only more heartless, when it stands 
 unmoved in the presence of Infinite Goodness, and even 
 in the hope of immortality thinks only of the gifts, and 
 forgets the Giver. He has even gone further, and traced 
 clearly the evil results of ascribing the source and ground 
 
3 1 THE ANALOG Y OF 
 
 of obligation to an outward expression of the Divine "Will, 
 instead of an inward feeling of the soul ; however true it 
 be that those feelings when unper verted, must secretly 
 recognize that Will's supreme authority. Otherwise, in- 
 deed, it could possess no moral goodness, aud the sole 
 attribute of the Divinity would be Almighty Power. But 
 when he proceeds, as he does continually, to speak of 
 these principles and feelings, as purely of positive Divine 
 appointment, which the same hand that implants them 
 may change or reverse, he fails to observe that he is 
 secretly retreading the steps of his own argument, and 
 the giant falsehood he had just exposed, which strips 
 even the throne of heaven of its glory, rears itself from 
 its fall with recovered force. 
 
 # The sense of good and evil, it is true, are prior to the 
 expression of the Divine Will, which does not create, but 
 only awakens therm This conviction, always felt, though 
 sometimes a mistaken zeal may have sought to obscure it, 
 alone leaves any meaning to that earnest enquiry, ' shall 
 not the Judge of all the earth do right?' — That which 
 defines cannot, from its very nature, become a property ; 
 and thus we cannot justly speak of that Will as good, so 
 long as we regard it as constituting of itself the final 
 standard of right and wrong. But it is plain that we are 
 brought equally to such a conclusion, whether we view it 
 as directly propounding itself as such a standard, or im- 
 planting feelings arbitrarily to which it afterwards refers. 
 The path leads us by a longer circuit, but the issue is the 
 same: indeed, when searched narrowly, the difference is 
 only this, that a secret sense of deception, painful even 
 to entertain for a moment, aggravates the evil of the 
 former view. The contrast is the same as would be felt 
 between the sway of an arbitrary sovereign, who should 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 31I 
 
 claim obedience to his commands on the sole ground of 
 power ; and one who should further claim the praise of 
 his subjects for governing with the sanction of a senate 
 of his own appointing, and tamely subservient to his will. 
 Yet surely this would be a faithful emblem of the divine 
 government, could we conceive the moral emotions as of 
 arbitrary appointment, and liable to be reversed at will 
 so that what we now condemn as evil, we might in such 
 a case have been taught to praise as good. From such 
 a view the mind recoils even more than from the former, 
 and takes refuge in the parallel expostulation, - Shall the 
 throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which 
 frameth mischief by a law V 
 
 Now if we accept the illustration afforded by geo- 
 metry, the mist clears from around us, and these spectral 
 difficulties haunt us no longer. The relations which there 
 present themselves, as soon as perceived, suggest the feel- 
 ing of unchangeableness. Though both the forms of 
 matter from which they have been abstracted, and the 
 mind which perceives them, readily acknowledge a crea- 
 tive will, with these the thought cannot be associated, 
 without the sense of an entire disparity. The only aspect 
 in which we can regard them, is as the objects of an all- 
 including intuition, but not as the objects of arbitrary 
 power. And in meditating closely on Moral Truth, we 
 shall find the same conviction equally strong. It is as 
 easy to conceive the laws of space inverted as the laws of 
 conscience, and to grant that the properties of the circle 
 might change, as that treachery should become a virtue, 
 and compassion a crime. So rooted is this conviction of 
 good and evil as anterior to choice, and law, as in 
 thought at least earlier than will, that reason and revela- 
 tion unite in tracing it even up to the throne of God, and 
 
312 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 He who sits thereon himself accounts it his glory, that 
 He delights in judgment, justice, and loving-kindness. 
 And thus, in the words of Hooker, the " perfection which 
 God is, giveth perfection to that He doeth," and that 
 Eternal Law, whose voice is the harmony of the world, 
 and to whom all creatures in heaven and earth do homage, 
 finds in His bosom her seat and surest resting-place. 
 
 If any, however, shrink from this view, as seeming to 
 affix bounds to Infinite Power, they will do well to reflect 
 that, by rejecting it, the still nobler attribute of wisdom 
 is entirely excluded. Wisdom lies in the choice of the 
 highest ends, and the best means to ensure their accom- 
 plishment; and the idea of means and of an end alike 
 involves a fixed relation, so that without the former the 
 latter could not equally be ensured. Exclude this, and 
 a series of effectless and unconnected acts comes in the 
 room of moral government, and a cold and iron fate 
 usurps the place in the thoughts of a widening and still 
 progressive Providence. 
 
 There is another subject of much practical importance, 
 which the present comparison may assist in explaining, 
 and which will serve to account for much of the un- 
 certainty often associated with moral science. In the 
 barrenness of imperfect definitions, which describe loosely, 
 without defining, we may learn the effect of a low and 
 variable standard of right and wrong in impairing the 
 vitality of truth, and blocking up the avenues of wisdom. 
 It is not enough, for instance, that a triangle were defined 
 as a figure bounded by three sides, unless we imply that 
 the sides are strictly right lines. A single consequence 
 could not be else deduced, and the figure might pass by 
 insensible change into a tortuous curve. And very similar 
 is the result, when we would bend in our reasonings the 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 313 
 
 rule of integrity, however lightly, to meet some purpose 
 of passing convenience. No further lesson can then be 
 learned : the key is twisted from its natural shape, and 
 will no longer open the mysteries of Providence, or move 
 freely in the wards of the heart. 
 
 The last step which requires notice in all demonstra- 
 tions is that course of deduction, which, starting from 
 previous definitions, passes into all the varied theorems 
 of science. To define is to lay the foundation, but this 
 rears the superstructure. There are two modes of arriving 
 at truth, 'induction/ and 'deduction,' or syllogism. In 
 the former we rise from instances to general maxims, in 
 the latter we re-descend, whether from the maxims of 
 induction, or the intuitive truths of reason, to remoter 
 results. And the figure has further propriety, for in 
 rising, the course, though safe, is laborious and slow, while 
 the descent is easy, but a single false step may prove 
 dangerous to the whole. 
 
 It is amusing to observe, how in the schools of modern 
 philosophy, as in other schools where the master has lost 
 his authority, reprisals have been taken for former bond- 
 age, and it seems felt as the greatest triumph of their 
 young liberty, to pull Aristotle or Plato by the beard. 
 The treatment which the syllogism has received at their 
 hands is a striking instance. It appears to haunt them 
 with the memory of past subjection. Every folly of the 
 schools, not to say every crime of the middle ages, has 
 been laid at its door; and the vehemence with which 
 they have exorcised it might lead us to suspect that this 
 was the triple knot of darkness, which so long had 
 shrouded learning in its gloom. 
 
 On a calm examination, we find little ground for this 
 indignant contempt with which it has been greeted. The 
 
3H THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 syllogism, as a recent encyclopedist has justly stated, was 
 never designed by Aristotle for a new and peculiar degree 
 of argument, and still less, as the rather flippant remark 
 of Locke would imply, as a means for making men 
 rational, but simply as an expression of the course which 
 the mind silently pursues in all its reasonings. It is a 
 method for spelling out distinctly the steps of an argument. 
 A reader, who should spell every word at length, it is true, 
 might make us first laugh, and soon grow weary. But 
 though in correct and tasteful reading many letters are 
 always silent, and even many words passed over lightly, 
 still it can scarcely be doubted that he who would read 
 without danger of mistake must at some time or other 
 have learned to spell. And so it is in the case before us. 
 A train of reasoning, as expressed, may usually be only 
 a series of minor propositions issuing in the conclusion ; 
 and in the readiness of the mind to invent, and its strength 
 to retain these, resides mainly its reasoning power ; but 
 the major must always be silently implied, or fallacy creeps 
 in, and the argument fails. And hence, though in point 
 of expression a syllogism might be called a redundant 
 enthymeme, in point of thought it must be found that 
 an enthymeme, as its name implies, is only a secret and 
 mental syllogism. 
 
 Against the course of syllogistic reasoning, the writer 
 before alluded to, in common with several others of equal 
 note, brings forward a more important charge. They 
 accuse it of entire and necessary barrenness. And as this 
 perhaps is the most common source of the opinion that 
 the certainty of science is not attainable in morals, it 
 will require to be briefly examined. The charge is, simply, 
 that a syllogism begs the point in debate, and assumes 
 the very thing it is wanted to prove ; and that, since the. 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 315 
 
 major involves the conclusion, the latter must be felt to 
 be true, before the former can be justly admitted. 
 
 It is easy to see that this triumphant charge, which is 
 brought with the air of a valuable discovery, does not lie 
 against the forms of logic, but against the very nature of 
 deductive reasoning. To deduce is not to create or to 
 invent, but merely to unfold. The fallacy lies in sup- 
 posing that when a proposition is felt and granted to be 
 true, all its various consequences must also be felt and 
 known. In a separate syllogism this may seem to be the 
 case, and here is the secret of that fancied leanness to 
 which Reid and Brown allude ; but to denounce, on this 
 ground, the whole process of deduction as unnecessary 
 and superfluous, is as reasonable as to persuade a man 
 that his legs are useless, because he appears just where 
 he was after a single stride. 
 
 The present analogy, however, more palpably sets 
 aside this objection, and places the importance of deduc- 
 tion in its fullest light. The demonstrations of geometry- 
 are simply a course of syllogistic reasoning ; and though 
 to throw the whole into mood and figure would be absurd, 
 yet, on suspicion of a lurking fallacy, any part might be 
 presented in a syllogistic form. Do we then speak of the 
 process as idle, or the results as useless or uncertain, be- 
 cause they must all have been included, as truly they 
 must, in the principles from which they have been de- 
 rived? Or rather, is it not the greatest boast of this 
 science, that from defioitions so simple, and axioms so 
 few, it brings to light conclusions innumerable, that spread 
 into all the fields of nature, and supply all the arts of 
 society with ceaseless inventions ? For, to use again the 
 figure which a misplaced ridicule supplies, it is not so 
 much the elder sons of truth's immortal family, as its 
 
316 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 younger descendants, that stoop to intermarry with the 
 dying phenomena around us, and yield the offspring of arts 
 that minister to the comforts, or lessons that aid in the 
 guidance, of daily life. 
 
 Now there is nothing in the nature of moral subjects 
 to preclude our offering the same answer. The spirit of 
 man has its own self-evidence, conscience its own defini- 
 tions, and those not cold and silent, as in geometry, but 
 vocal with strong emotion, and endued with a living 
 power ; its truths are in their nature as prolific ; the 
 opening for deduction is the same ; and why should it not 
 lead to certainties as sure, and conclusions as various ? 
 Even were we to speak of a person as knowing whatever 
 is involved in a truth which he admits, and thus with 
 Socrates in the Meno regard all reasoning as a calling to 
 memory things already known, however forced and un- 
 natural such a style of expression would be, this could not 
 affect the practical importance of the course of deduction 
 we are considering. The acorn may be said to contain 
 the oak, but certainly will neither roof a palace, nor build 
 a navy : still less could that implicit knowledge, which on 
 such a view we may all be fancied to possess, supply the 
 place of expanded wisdom. The colours of the spectrum 
 must have been at first in the sunbeam, but are we there- 
 fore to speak of the prism as useless ? Deduction is the 
 prism of the reason; and why should we prize it more 
 lightly, or place less faith in its power to unfold those 
 various hues of unknown beauty, which lie veiled beneath 
 the simplicity of truth ? 
 
 But however complete the parallel between the nature 
 of Mathematical and Moral Science, in their postulates, 
 their definitions, their reasonings, and the certainty to 
 which they lead, we shall be in great danger of questioning 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 317 
 
 the whole, unless we bear in mind the great difference 
 which exists in the comparative ease of their attainment. 
 The path to the latter is encompassed with many obstacles 
 and dangers from which the former is free. Giant forms 
 of prejudice, the idols of the market, the theatre and the 
 cave, beset its approaches, with passion to bewilder, and 
 pleasure to betray. It is not merely as in the other case, 
 that the mind must be freed from distraction, and brought 
 into the attitude of patient attention — though even this 
 is no easy task. There is a moral atmosphere also needed, 
 clear from the cold damps of interest, with a kindly mix- 
 ture of sunshine and shower, before the germs which may 
 have been sown in the conscience can grow up into full 
 conviction or ripened knowledge, or root themselves firmly 
 against the passing storm. 
 
 These observations, which are rather hints that might 
 lead to thought, than thoughts themselves, may be found, 
 perhaps, if pursued into their further bearings, to remove 
 the blank which has been so often felt, and which was 
 alluded to before. They would thus lead us to see the 
 great moral purpose to be fulfilled, when rightly under- 
 stood, by mathematical truth, as one wide emblem of the 
 sureness of those unchanging laws, which, whether remem- 
 bered or forgotten, whether honoured or despised, rule 
 with unfailing might in the destinies of men and of king- 
 doms. Thus might we learn that this wand of science, 
 which has been used with fatal force by unblest hands, 
 to freeze the spirit into moral apathy, and bind down its 
 powers to earth, needs only to be reversed to break the 
 spell, and to rear it once more from the dust into the 
 mild and stately dignity which befits the assured possessor 
 of eternal truth. Once taught to understand this his 
 
318 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 appointed office, even the Genius of the severer sciences, 
 blinded almost by poring continually on his figures traced 
 in the sand, might be brought to turn his countenance 
 heavenward, and with silent and upward eye do homage 
 to faith's calm and moonlight beam. 
 
 A remark on this subject, in closing, may not be un- 
 suited to the time-hallowed walls of this retreat of learning: 
 and nursery of the Christian church. 
 
 There is something in the memory of departed ages, 
 which lends a tender and solemn feeling to every theme 
 with which it is mingled, and flings a twilight grandeur 
 wherever it falls. And never perhaps does the high 
 dignity of the pursuits of science strike the soul with 
 deeper power, than when we thus view them as a charge 
 bequeathed by past generations, and see its signal lights 
 thus handed onward, and still onward, over the hills of 
 time. It is then by degrees that we are wakened into 
 the sense of its imperishableness ; and while we reflect how 
 many, that have sought to decipher this book of nature, 
 have long since passed away, and these mysterious charac- 
 ters remain unchanging and unchangeable, we gaze on it 
 with a thrill of livelier interest, and feel that the names, 
 which have engraven themselves on its truths, have gained 
 a more lasting record than pillars of brass or iron. A 
 feeling of awe thus mingles with our inquiries, as if we 
 were searching into the archives of eternity; and if pri- 
 vileged to pass onward a single step in these pleasant 
 paths, the high consciousness awakens that we are now 
 communing with truth, which from the beginning has 
 had its dwelling in the temple of nature, but had ever 
 before been veiled, in still retirement, from every mortal 
 eye. 
 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 319 
 
 But if such be the direct interest of natural science, 
 ■when viewed as the deposit left us by the fathers of a 
 former age, how far deeper does it become, when we learn 
 to see in it the reflected image of truth, immutable like 
 itself, but nobler in its objects, and loftier in its aims; a 
 truth mingled with all the mysteries of the soul's inmost 
 consciousness, and which the same hauds have entrusted 
 to our charge ! The porch itself is worthy of all admiration 
 — how much more the temple into which it leads ! And 
 though we may see too many who enter the former, and 
 admire its beauty, refusing to press into the inner shrine, 
 and even turning their backs in contempt when they 
 ought to adore, to worship nature in her forms of eastern 
 splendor, forgetful of Him who has robed her in the 
 garments of light, we shall not from this feel tempted to 
 doubt the harmony of the whole building, or the veiled 
 glory that dwells within. The pride of an exclusive 
 pursuit may lead the sceptic analyst to grasp all certainty 
 as his peculiar claim, and to look with scorn upon truths 
 too living, and too mighty, for an enfeebled conscience and 
 a palsied heart. But those who enter into the spirit of 
 the fathers of our church, who have here left their memory 
 at least to their children, will read the lessons of science 
 with a different eye. And while they train their thoughts 
 by its severe and wholesome discipline, they will also 
 see in it a monitor that is ever pointing them onward to 
 holier aims. Amidst the busy scenes of life, in all their 
 farthest and most inland wanderings, they will hear its 
 voice, like the mystic shell from the caves of ocean, breathe 
 in their ears its soft and solemn warning. It will thus 
 recall their thoughts to ' that immortal sea,' towards which 
 the spirit yearns continually, till they dwell once more in 
 
320 MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY. 
 
 the presence of truths, unchanging and eternal, although 
 forsaken and unvisited by the passing throng, 
 
 "And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 
 
 ^?" OF THB*^^ 
 
 'UNIVERSITY] 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 


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