matics, when a pupil of a tender age enters first on the study of the elements, his judgment leans not a little on that of his teacher, and he feels his confidence in the truth of his conclusions sensibly confirmed by his faith in the superior understanding of those whom he looks up to with respect. It is only by degrees that he emancipates himself from this dependence, and comes at last to perceive the irresistible force of demonstrative evidence; and yet it will not be inferred from this that the power of reasoning is the result of imitation or of habit. The conclusion mentioned above with respect to the power of moral judgment is equally erroneous.

III. Paley's Statement of the Question as to the Existence of a Moral Sense.] The looseness and sophistry of Paley's reasonings on the subject of the moral faculty may be traced to the vague and indistinct conception he had formed of the point in question. In proof of this I shall transcribe his own words from his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. It is necessary to premise, that he introduces his argument against the existence of a moral sense by quoting a story from Valerius_Maximus, which I shall present to my readers in Dr. Paley's version.

"The father of Caius Toranius had been proscribed by the Triumvirate. Caius Toranius, coming over to the interests of that party, discovered to the officers who were in pursuit of his father's life the place where he concealed himself, and gave them withal a description by which they might distinguish his person when they found him. The old man, more anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son than about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to inquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son was well,-whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of his generals. That son,' replied one of the officers, 'so dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us; by his information thou art apprehended and diest.' The officer with this struck a poniard to his heart, and the unhappy parent fell, not so much affected by his fate as by the means to which he owed it."

"Now," says Dr. Paley," the question is, whether, if

this story were related to the wild boy caught some years ago in the woods of Hanover, or to a savage without experience and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, and consequently under no possible influence of example, authority, education, sympathy, or habit, whether, I say, such a one would feel, upon the relation, any degree of that sentiment of disapprobation of Toranius's conduct which we feel,

or not.

"They who maintain the existence of a moral sense, of innate maxims, of a natural conscience, that the love of virtue and hatred of vice are instinctive, or the perception of right and wrong intuitive, (all of which are only different ways of expressing the same opinion,) affirm that he would.

"They who deny the existence of a moral sense, &c., affirm that he would not.

"And upon this issue is joined." *

To those who are at all acquainted with the history of this dispute, it must appear evident that the question is here completely misstated; and that, in the whole of Dr. Paley's subsequent argument on the subject, he combats a phantom of his own imagination. The opinion which he ascribes to his antagonists has been loudly and repeatedly disavowed by all the most eminent moralists who have disputed Locke's reasonings against innate practical principles; and is, indeed, so very obviously absurd, that it never could have been for a moment entertained by any person in his senses.

Did it ever enter into the mind of the wildest theorist to imagine that the sense of seeing would enable a man, brought up from the moment of his birth in utter darkness, to form a conception of light and colors? But would it not be equally rash to conclude, from the extravagance of such a supposition, that the sense of seeing is not an original part of the human frame ?

The above quotation from Paley forces me to remark further, that, in combating the supposition of a moral sense, he has confounded together, as only different ways of ex

* Moral Philosophy, Book I. Chap. v.

pressing the same opinion, a variety of systems, which are regarded by all our best philosophers, not only as essentially distinct, but as in some measure opposed to each other. The system of Hutcheson, for example, is identified with that of Cudworth, to which (as will afterwards appear) it stands in direct opposition. But although, in this instance, the author's logical discrimination does not appear to much advantage, the sweeping censure thus bestowed on so many of our most celebrated ethical theories has the merit of throwing a very strong light on that particular view of the subject which it is the aim of his reasonings to establish in contradiction to them all.*

* On the subject of Paley's illustration cited in the text, Dr. Whewell remarks:- "To expect to obtain moral axioms by referring the question to a jury of savages, or of men nearly approaching to savages in prejudice, ignorance, or passion, would certainly be a very wild expectation; and I hope it will not be considered a defect in any moral system to which we may be led, that it does not satisfy such an expectation as this. The notion, that an appeal to such a jury is the way to test moral axioms, is something like Paley's proposal of bringing the narration of an atrocious crime before Peter, the wild boy, who was bred up, or rather grew up, like a wild beast; and of doing this, in order to discern whether man has a natural abhorrence of crime. Paley himself points out the difficulty which makes such an experiment impossible: If,' he says, he could be made to understand the story.' But it is evident that he could not be made to understand the story, except by growing up as a man among men, and ceasing to be a wild boy. And, in like manner, we must say of a supposed promiscuous jury of men, by whom you would test our moral axioms: If these men are so savage, and ignorant, and passionate, as to have in them the attributes of men imperfectly unfolded, they cannot tell you what moral truths are evident to

man as man.

And again: "Truths may be self-evident when we have made a certain progress in thinking, which are not self-evident when we begin to think. And this may be, not because the truths thus later discerned are dependent on the prerequisite truths by any logical tie, or can be inferred from them by argument; but because, by the train of thought by which we come to see those earlier gleams of truth, the mind is unfolded and instructed, so as to perceive the later and fuller light. This may be so, because in the process of thought thus previously gone through we have learnt to classify and distinguish the actions of men around us, or our own feelings and impulses within us. It may be that to groups and classes and relations of emotions and sentiments we have given names; and that through these names language has exercised its power of aiding thought, and has enabled us to see what, without such aid, we could not see. In these ways, and in others, moral truths may become evident to us, when we have made some little advance in the development of our moral nature, and in the power of apprehending such truth; although, so long as we were half imbruted by the absence of any calm and continued thought on such subjects, and by the scantiness of our

SECTION III.

THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF HUMAN NATURE NOT DISPROVED BY THE DIVERSITY IN MEN'S MORAL JUDgments.

I. How far and in what Way our Moral Nature may be affected by Education.] In the preceding observations I have endeavoured to prove that the moral faculty is an original principle of our constitution, which is not resolva

acquaintance with those relations among men which are the materials for such thought, we were insensible to the evidence which now seems so glaring. It requires a culture of the human mind to make that evident which, nevertheless, is evident by the nature of the human mind. "And, in truth, we cannot help asking why we should go to savages for the genuine voice of human nature. Why should it be supposed that men are more properly men, because in them some of the most important attributes of humanity remain latent and undeveloped? If cultured men see, as evident in morals, what savages do not see as evident, are not cultured men still men? And all that they know and think, in addition to what savages know and think, did they not come to know it by the use of their human faculties? The early Romans called every stranger an enemy; every peregrinus was hostis. The later Romans filled the theatre with thunders of applause, when the poet made the actor say,

'Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.'

Which of these two was the genuine voice of humanity? Was not the latter evidently the assent to the irresistible evidence of a moral truth? Was that earlier practical denial of this moral truth really the utterance of a moral conviction? Was it not an utterance which came from man, not as the utterance of conviction, but of uncontrolled fear and anger? not an articulate utterance in the name of humanity, but an inarticulate cry, borrowing part of its import from the ferine nature of the nation? It was a trace of the wolf's milk."- Lectures on Systematic Morality, Lect. II. pp. 34, 38. See also Lieber's Political Ethics, Book II. Chap. iii., and Sedgwick's Discourse on the Studies of the University, pp. 57 et seq., and Appendix (E).

"Peter the Wild Boy" made a great noise among scientific men in the early part of the last century. "Swift has immortalized him in his humorous production, It cannot rain, but it pours; or, London strewed with Rarities. Linnæus gave him a niche in the Systema Naturæ, under the denomination of Juvenis Hanoveranus; Buffon, De Paauw, and J. J. Rousseau have extolled him as the true child of nature, the genuine unsophisticated man. Monboddo is still more enthusiastic, declaring his appearance to be a much more important occurrence than the discovery of the planet Uranus." Lawrence's Natural History of Man, Chap. ii. He turned out to be an idiotic boy, who had been lost in the woods, or driven into them and abandoned, about a year before he was brought into such notice.- ED.

ble into any other principle or principles more general than itself; in particular, that it is not resolvable into selflove, or a prudential regard to our own interest. In order, however, completely to establish the existence of the moral faculty as an essential and universal part of human nature, it is necessary to examine with attention the objections which have been stated to this conclusion by some writers, who were either anxious to display their ingenuity by accounting in a different manner for the origin of our moral ideas, or who wish to favor the cause of skepticism by explaining away the reality and immutability of moral distinctions.

Among these objections, that which merits the most careful consideration, from the characters of those by whom it is maintained, is founded on the possibility of explaining the fact without increasing the number of original principles in our constitution. The rules of morality, it has been supposed, were, in the first instance, brought to light by the sagacity of philosophers and politicians; and it is only in consequence of the influence of education that they appear to form an original part of the human frame. The diversity of opinions among different nations with respect to the morality of particular actions has been considered as a strong confirmation of this doctrine.

But the power of education, although great, is confined within certain limits. It is, indeed, much more extensive than philosophers once believed, as sufficiently appears from those modern discoveries, with respect to the distant parts of the globe, which have so wonderfully enlarged our knowledge of human nature, and which show clearly that many sentiments and opinions, which had been formerly regarded as inseparable from the nature of man, are the results of accidental situation. If our forefathers, however, went into one extreme on this point, we seem to be at present in no small danger of going into the opposite one, by considering man as entirely a factitious being, that may be moulded into any form by education and fashion.

I have said that the power of education is confined within certain limits. The reason is obvious, for it is by coöperating with the natural principles of the mind that education produces its effects. Nay, this very suscepti