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THEORY OF MORALS.

PART FIRST.

OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS IN GENERAL.

CHAPTER I.

MORAL CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS.

1. THE distinction between actions morally good and morally bad, morally Right and morally Wrong, and therefore worthy of approval or worthy of blame, perpetually exercises a powerful influence over the judgments and the conduct of men.

2. To discover the nature, in other words, the origin or cause of this distinction, or, more correctly, the Law according to which it takes place, has been, and still is, an object of anxious inquiry among philosophers; for no theory satisfactory in all respects has yet been proposed.

3. It is held by one class of moralists, that there is an original, eternal, absolute difference, independent of the peculiar constitution of man, between Right and Wrong; and men have been supposed to be endowed with an innate faculty of perceiving that difference, just as through the eye, the touch, and the palate, they discern the difference between black and white, straight and crooked, hard and soft, sweet

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and sour. This power of moral discernment has by some been ascribed to reason, the faculty, that is, by which truth in general is discerned; by others it has been ascribed to a supposed faculty appropriated to the discernment of moral truth in particular, called Conscience, or the Moral Sense. It has 'been further supposed, that Right is endowed with a certain peculiar beauty or desirableness, which_attracts us to pursue it, and that Wrong carries with it a certain deformity or disgustfulness, which repels and restrains us. This theory of morals, which we may distinguish as the Platonic theory, taught by Plato, revived in modern times by Cudworth and Clarke, and more recently maintained by Price, Kant, Cousin, and Jouffroy, is liable, however, to insuperable objections.

4. In the first place, it seems to be well established, and notwithstanding strenuous efforts lately made in favor of the opposite opinion, philosophers are more and more inclined to admit, that the knowledge of the absolute is not within the reach of human capacity. What men have the power to know is, not what things are in themselves absolutely, but only what they are relatively to man; that is, how they appear to, and how they affect the human observer. All we can know is, what men perceive, and what men feel. The constitution of our own nature, not the absolute constitution of things, is the proper object of human research; and only in the constitution of man can we find, if we find at all, the origin of human opinions and actions.

5. To escape this objection, and at the same time

to account for the pleasurable and disgustful feelings attendant upon the perception of Right and Wrong, Shaftesbury and others maintain, that the distinction between right and wrong is, in fact, a subjective distinction, originating in a peculiar sensibility, to which they give the name of Moral Sentiment, by means of which we feel certain actions to be right, and others to be wrong.

But whether in its original shape, or thus modified, the Platonic theory is liable to the decisive objection, that it admits of no practical application; that it explains nothing, being a mere truism, a mere form of asserting, what is the very thing to be explained, that men do distinguish between Right and Wrong. So long and so far as there is a perfect coincidence between what is called the reason, conscience, moral sense, or moral sentiment of all men, like that which exists in the perception of forms, colors, and sounds, this theory answers sufficiently well. But it is precisely because there are great differences among men upon questions of morals, that the nature or law of moral distinctions becomes an object of such anxious inquiry. What we want is, some test by which to distinguish, in cases of dispute, what is Right, and what is Wrong. (But so long as each man appeals to his own particular reason, his own particular conscience, his own particular moral sentiment, as the ultimate and infallible tribunal, just as he appeals to his eye in matters of color, to his sight and touch upon questions of form, and to his ear upon questions of sound, no such test does, or can, exist. All consciences do not agree, like all ears and all eyes. We

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