BOOK IV.

OUR INTUITIVE MORAL CONVICTIONS.

CHAPTER I.

THEIR GENERAL NATURE.

I.

STILL deeper interests are involved in our being able to prove that there is an immutable and eternal morality than even in showing that there is immutable and eternal truth. After having labored at such length to demonstrate that there are fundamental principles involved in the intellectual exercises of the mind, it will not be needful to take such pains to prove that there are like convictions of a moral character.

While our moral powers are not the same with the intellectual, they are in many respects analogous. We have a power of discerning truth and error; we have also a power of knowing moral good and evil. The latter is the Conscience, as the former is the Intelligence. I am not here to unfold its properties and its modes of action, as I have done in my "Psychology, the Motive Powers." Nor am I to construct a science of our moral nature, as is done in Ethics. I am simply to set forth the fundamental principles involved in Morality.

II.

The primitive moral principles take the same Three Forms as the intellectual ones. We have a moral cogni

tion when the acts are immediately before us, and we discern at once that certain of them are good, such as benevolence, and certain of them are evil, such as malice. We have moral beliefs going beyond our immediate perceptions, as when we declare the character of Cato to be commendable, and that of Sextus to be vile. We can thus rise to the contemplation of a goodness which is eternal. We pronounce moral judgments, as when we declare that virtue deserves happiness.

III.

Our moral intuitions are to be tried by the same three tests as the intellectual, namely, self-evidence, necessity, and catholicity. We perceive at once that this daughter is good when toiling for an invalid mother. When we candidly contemplate the deed, we cannot be made to decide otherwise. We notice, thirdly, that the act meets with an approving response in every bosom.

It is of special importance to observe what is the necessity attached to these moral convictions. As every intuition has its own nature, so it has also its own kind of corresponding necessity. A necessity attached to a cognition, that there is a colored surface before my eyes, is somewhat different from the necessity to believe that space is unbounded; but there is a necessity in both when the mind contemplates the objects. So our conviction that ingratitude is a sin is different from either of these, while there is a necessity of judgment in each when the cases are fairly represented to it. The necessity covers what is involved in the intuition, neither less

nor more.

CHAPTER II.

VIRTUE WITH ITS ATTACHED OBLIGATIONS.

I.

WHAT is approved of by our Moral Nature, or Conscience, is called Moral Good, or Virtue. I believe we can theoretically determine what virtue is. IT IS LOVE ACCORDING TO LAW.

In maintaining this position we must include in the love Self-Love. We are bound to love ourselves. Selflove is not merely an impulse, an instinct, it is a duty. But let us understand what we mean when we say so. We do not mean by this a love of pleasure, a love of power, a love of fame, a love of money; all these are selfish affections. The affection that is a duty is a love of ourselves as ourselves, of ourselves as God made us, with intelligence, with feeling, with conscience, moral and responsible.

It is to be a love regulated by Law. We are not at liberty to cast away ourselves, our health, our lives, our talents, our affections, our character, our purity, our influence for good. We are bound to respect, to honor ourselves, to improve ourselves, to cultivate the gifts which God has bestowed upon us, and extend our influence for good. Temperance, in the Greek and Roman senses of the term, should be to us one of the cardinal virtues: we have to restrain ourselves, our lusts and passions. We are to aim at nothing less than holiness, a separation from all evil. A self-love of this kind, that is, love regulated by law, is a virtue, and a virtue of the

highest order. But it is ever to be accompanied with a sister Virtue.

II.

It is love to Others. The standard of this is already set: we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. It may manifest itself in two forms:

The Love of Complacency. We delight in the object or person beloved. It is thus that the mother clasps her infant to her bosom; thus that the sister interests herself in every movement of her little brother, and is proud of his feats; thus that the father, saying little but feeling much, follows the career of his son in the trying rivalries of the world; thus that throughout our lives, our hearts, if hearts we have, clung round the tried friends of our youth; thus that the wife would leave this world with the last look on her husband; thus that the father would depart with his sons and daughters around his couch. Love looks out for the persons beloved. The mother discovers her son in that crowd. The blacksmith

Hears his daughter's voice,

Singing in the village choir.

The Love of Benevolence. In this we not only delight in the contemplation and society of the persons beloved; we wish well to them, we wish them all that is good. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." We will oblige them if we can; we will serve them if in our power; we will watch for opportunities of promoting their welfare; we will make sacrifices for their good. This love is ready to flow forth towards relatives and friends, towards neighbors and companions, towards all with whom we come in contact; it will go out towards the whole family of mankind. We

are ready to increase their happiness, and in the highest exercises of love to raise them in the scale of being, and to elevate them morally and spiritually.

III.

Moral Good lays an Obligation on us to attend to it. This sense, or rather conviction of obligation, is one of the peculiarities, is indeed the chief peculiarity, of our moral perceptions. Herein do our moral convictions, whether of the nature of cognitions, beliefs, or judgments, differ from the intellectual convictions which have passed under our notice in the previous parts of this treatise. That a straight line is the shortest between two points, this I am constrained to decide when my attention is called to the subject, but I know of no duty thence arising, no affection which I should thereon cherish, no action which I ought to do. But when I am led to believe that there is a good God who made me and upholds me, the mind declares that it is and must be good to love and obey that Being, and that there is an obligation lying on me to do so. This is expressed by such phrases as déov, duty, right, ought, obligation, the convictions embodied in which cannot be accounted for on any utilitarian hypothesis. It is shown that a particular action readily within our power will tend to promote the happiness of an individual or of society; the mind's apprehension of this is one thing, and the conviction that we ought to do it is an entirely different thing, and the two should never be confounded.

But the conscience is not only a cognitive, it is a motive, power. This conviction of obligation distinguishes it at once from the other motive, as it does from the other cognitive, powers. The inducements addressed to man's sense of duty are altogether different from those ad