character. We have seen that in all physical and in all mental causes there are two or more agents. So in voluntary action there are two antecedents: there is the Motive and there is the Will. Their concurrence is necessary to the product.

It is necessary here to ascertain definitely what a Motive is. It is something addressed to the will prior to its action. It differs in the case of different individuals and of the same man at different times. I have known a tradesman who at one part of his life could not pass a tavern without being tempted to enter and seek excitement in intoxicating drink. To another tradesman the house presented no such allurement, and it ceased to present any temptation to the first man when he had succeeded in conquering his evil habit. A motive is in the mind prior to action, and alluring to a certain action. It may consist partly of some external circumstance; it has always an accompanying mental appetence, say the love of pleasure, of renown, or of money. This appetence may be a natural inclination, or it may be the result of a course of action, say our habits, at every step in the formation of which there may have been acts of the will for all of which the individual was responsible at the time. What in the end presents itself to the Will before action is the Motive. The Motive has no compelling power. The Will, or rather the mind in the exercise of Will, is free. It is free to choose, it is free to reject. No action takes place till the will chooses. When it accepts or rejects, it sanctions the motive. For this it is responsible.

IV.

The Will is Responsible for all its acts of choice or rejection, be they volitions or be they acts of attention or wishes. We have seen that our moral nature points to a power above itself, a power which has authority; it

should bow to that authority; it must give account of itself to that power. When God is revealed by his works without or within us, then we are constrained to believe that we are under law to God. So then every one must give account of himself to God. Thus far the philosophy of intuition carries us. I am not convinced that it goes farther. I am not sure that it proves to us that there is and must be a judgment day, but it prompts us to look out for it, and furnishes a presumption in its favor.

A different method of reconciling freedom with causation has been introduced by Kant, who has been followed by a long train of theologians and metaphysicians. According to this view, the mind knows only phenomena, and not things, and the law of cause and effect is a mental framework giving a form to our knowledge of phenomena. It applies, therefore, to appearances and not to things, which, for aught we know, or can know in this world, may or may not obey the law of causation. Kant acknowledges that we are led by the speculative principles of the mind to look on even the will as under the dominion of cause, but then it is quite conceivable that the thing itself may after all be free, and we are led to believe it to be free by the Practical Reason. Now, I have to remark, first of all, on this theory, that it must be taken in its entirety. We are not at liberty (as some would do) to adopt it merely so far as it may suit our purpose, and refuse the very foundation on which it is built. We must, in particular, admit as a fundamental principle that we can never know things; that causation has no respect whatever to things, but is a mere subjective principle of the mind; that we cannot prove the existence of God from causation. But I have failed in one of the main ends of this treatise if I have not succeeded in showing that the mind has knowledge of things in its primary exercises, that we know objects as having potency, and that the law of cause and effect refers to such objects. If we deny this, we are denying certain of the intuitions of the mind in some of their clearest enunciations; and if we deny them in one of their declarations, why not in others? and if we deny one set, why not every other set? till at last we know not what to believe and what to disbelieve. Those who believe that the mind can come to the knowledge of things, and that they discover power in things, cannot resort to this theory.

CHAPTER V.

RELATION OF MORAL GOOD AND HAPPINESS.

THESE two have a number of points of connection and correspondence. Much of moral good consists in the voluntary promotion of happiness, and the diminution of pain in a world in which there is such a liability to suffering. A very large number of human virtues, and of vices, too, take their origin from man's capacity of pleasure and pain; and in a state of things in which there was no possibility of increasing felicity, or removing misery, many of this world's virtues would altogether disappear. Still the two, while they have many interesting points of affinity, are not to be identified. In particular, we are not to resolve virtue into a mere tendency to promote the pleasure of the individual or happiness of the race. There seem to me to be certain great truths which the mind perceives at once in regard to the connection of the two.

I.

The good is good altogether independent of the pleasure it may bring. There is a good which does not immediately contemplate the production of happiness. Such, for example, are love to God, the glorifying of God, and the hallowing of his name: these have no respect, in our entertaining and cherishing them, to an augmentation of the Divine felicity. No doubt such an act or spirit may, by reflection of light, tend to brighten our own felicity; but this is an indirect effect, which follows only where we cherish the temper and perform the

corresponding work in the idea that it is right. We do deeds of justice to the distant, to the departed, and the dead, who never may be conscious of what we have performed. Even in regard to services done with the view of promoting the happiness of the individual, or of the community, we are made to feel that, if happiness be good, the benevolence which leads us to seek the happiness of others is still better, is alone morally good. In all cases the conscience constrains us to decide that virtue is good, whether it does or does not contemplate the production of pleasure.

II.

Our moral constitution declares that we ought to promote the happiness of all who are susceptible of happiness. The only plausible form of the utilitarian theory of morals is that elaborated by Bentham, who says that we ought to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But why ought we to do so? Whence get we the should, the obligation, the duty? Why should I seek the happiness of any other being than myself? why the happiness of a great number, or of the greatest number? why the happiness even of any one individual beyond the unit of self? If the advocates of the “greatest happiness" principle will only answer this question thoroughly, they must call in a moral principle, or take refuge in a system against which our whole nature rebels, in a theory which says that we are not required to do more than look after our own gratifications. The very advocates of the greatest happiness theory are thus constrained, in consistency with their view, to call in an ethical principle, and this will be found, if they examine it, to require more from man than that he should further the felicity of others. But while it covers vastly more ground, it certainly includes this, that we are bound, as

much as in us lies, to promote the welfare of all who are capable of having their misery alleviated or their felicity enhanced.

III.

Our moral convictions affirm that moral good should meet with happiness. They seem to declare that this is in itself appropriate and good; and when we are led to believe in the existence of a good God, we are sure that he will seek to secure this end. Experience, no doubt, shows many things in seeming opposition to this, shows many crushed with misfortune and wrung with agony, who are far more virtuous than those who are in the enjoyment of health and prosperity. But our inward convictions guide us to the right conclusions in spite of these apparently contradictory results of outward observation. They lead us to believe that they who are thus afflicted are after all suffering no injustice, inasmuch as they have sinned against Heaven, and to expect that the wicked will not be allowed to pass unpunished. And since we do not discover a full retribution in this world, they lead us to look forward to a day of judgment, in which all the inequalities and seeming incongruities of this present dispensation will be rectified in appearance as well as in reality, and the justice of God's moral government fully vindicated.

IV.

Our moral convictions declare that sin merits pain as a punishment. There seems to be as close a connection between sin and pain as there is between virtue and happiness. There may indeed be happiness, and there may be suffering, where there is neither virtue nor the opposite, as, for example, among the brute creation; but we decide that, wherever there is virtue, it merits hap