the soul. (3) A sense or instinct is essentially a subjective property or disposition. Its cognitions are relative to the constitution of the organism. It pretends to no universal or absolute validity. Its action could conceivably be reversed by Almighty God. Animals might have been created to relish salt, dislike sugar, and so on. But moral perceptions are not acts of this kind; they, like the fundamental intellectual intuitions, disclose to us necessary, absolute, and universal truths which hold inviolable for God Himself. (4) The formal object of a sense is, moreover, always a concrete individual fact. In relation to this object the sense operates invariably and infallibly, and it is not capable of transformation by education; but the moral relations expressed in the primary ethical principles do not partake of such a concrete individualistic character. In addition Conscience is subject to error and perversion, and it requires proper training to exercise its functions in a perfect manner. (5) Finally, the authority implied in the decisions of the Moral Faculty completely separates it from all forms of sensibility. An ethical sense might be the root of impulses to certain kinds of action, but it could neither impose nor disclose obligation.

Ethical terms defined.-The confusion between the intellectual, emotional, and appetitive elements involved in the exercise of the Moral Faculty has been the cause of so much error that besides criticism it is needful to distinguish these several factors carefully. Moral Intuition is the percipient act by which the truth of a self-evident moral principle is immediately cognized. The name is also applied to the discernment of the moral quality of a particular action; perhaps this exertion of the Practical Intellect, as well as moral decisions based on longer processes of reasoning, may be best designated Moral Judgment. Moral Sentiment is not an ethical cognition, but the attendant emotion-the feeling of satisfaction or remorse, of approval or disapproval excited by the consideration of a good or bad action by myself or somebody else. The term Moral Instinct is employed to denote a native disposition towards some class of socially useful acts, e.g., gratitude, generosity, &c. Such natural indeliberate tendencies do certainly exist, but they are not truly moral any more than the sympathetic impulses of brutes. It is only when approved by reason and consented to by will that they become moral in the strict sense of the word. Moral Habits, that is, dispositions acquired by intelligent free exercise, are moral in the fullest sense.

Associationist Theory. The chief attack, however, on the Moral Sense doctrine came from the disciples of Hartley and

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Bentham. The Sensationist school necessarily adopted utility as the foundation of morality, and sought to resolve moral distinctions into feelings of pleasure and pain. Conscience, it is held, is not a simple original faculty, but a complex product derived from experience of the agreeable and disagreeable results of actions. The child is trained up to obedience, and the idea of external authority is formed in its mind. Certain acts are associated with punishments, others with rewards. Affection towards the person of the superior, social sympathy and reverence for law, as well as fear of retaliation and enlightened prudence, all gradually amalgamate to produce that indefinite mysterious feeling, attached to the acts of the moral faculty. The essential constituents of conscience are, therefore, the faint traces of pleasurable and painful consequences which have been associated in past experience with particular kinds of action.

Criticism. The objections to this theory are numerous: (1) It does not account for the very early age at which moral judgments are formed, nor for the ease and readiness with which they are elicited before any proper estimate of the utility of various classes of acts can be attained. The child is able, while still very young, to distinguish between just and unjust punishment, and thus to apply a moral criterion to the very machinery by which its moral notions are supposed to be manufactured. (2) The Utilitarian hypothesis again does not account for the absolute authority attributed to moral decisions by the fully developed human mind. (3) Nor does it explain the peculiar sanctity attached to Loral precepts. Mere experiences of utility, mere impulses towards pleasure or from pain would never generate the axiom, Fiat justitia ruat cælum. (4) It does not account for the universality of this reverence in regard to at least some moral distinctions; nor for the universality of ethical notions exhibited in terms to be discovered in every language, and found in the customs, laws, and religions of all nations. In spite of wide diversities of opinion as to what is right, there is the unanimous con viction that right ought to be done. (5) Again, the notions of duty and utility are not merely radically different, but often stand in opposition. If apparent self-sacrifice is seen to be designed for gain, its virtue disappears. (5) Logically followed out, this theory annihilates the claim to authority of conscience, which prescribes the observance of certain intrinsic distinctions of human action. (7) As a final proof of the utter inadequacy of association and personal experiences of pleasure and pain to generate conscience, it may be noted that since the Evolutionist hypothes has been

invented, the representatives of Sensism, almost to a man, now admit that the theory maintained so confidently by their school twenty years ago is completely insufficient.

Origin and Authority of Moral Judgments. In connection with the associationist theory it has been maintained that the character of the moral faculty is in no way affected by its genesis. Dr. Sidgwick justly holds that the existence, origin, and validity of moral cognitions are three distinct questions; but he errs in teaching that the two last are completely independent of each other. He asserts (a) that the validity of any cognition is not weakened by its late appearance in life; (b) that the mere derivation of moral perceptions from simpler elements cannot render them untrustworthy, nor their innate character establish their infallibility; (c) that consequently Ethical science is no more concerned with the origin of Conscience than Geometry with that of Spatial Perception.15 This doctrine draws its chief plausibility from an ambiguity contained in the words "validity" and "trustworthiness." These terms as predicated of intellectual cognition mean that the perception in question agrees with an objective fact universally admitted. As applied to moral cognition they mean that the judgments of conscience possess authority. They signify that these acts (a) reveal to us law of a transcendent and sacred character, and (3) thereby impose on us an obligation to special kinds of action or abstinence, (y) independent of pleasurable and painful consequences. Obviously then: (1) The essence of genuine analogy with mathematical knowledge is wanting. (2) The vital objection is not to the late date assigned to the appearance of moral notions, but to the materials out of which they are supposed to be manufactured. (3) The real question is, whether the supremacy and holiness claimed for the deliverances of conscience are justified by genuinely objective moral distinctions, or are merely illusory products containing only sensational and emotional elements of a non-moral kind. If the latter alternative be true, their pretended sovereignty is obviously but an illegitimate usurpation. If, as Dr. Martineau puts it, "the conscience is but the dressed dish of some fine cuisine, if you can actually exhibit it simmering in the saucepan of pleasure and pain, the decorous shape into which it sets ere it appears at table, cannot alter its nature or make it more than its ingredients." 16 Similarly, from the opposite standpoint of Physical Ethics, Mr. Sidgwick's view has been attacked on the ground that the pretensions put forward on behalf of conscience are very different from those of the spatial faculty,

15 Methods, Bk. III. c. i. § 4. 16 Types, Vol. II. p. 14.

and that the ultimate grounds of Morality are disputed, while those of Mathematics are agreed upon.

Evolutionist Hypothesis.-The Evolutionist doctrine of the Moral Faculty varies from that just described merely by enlarging the period during which the pleasurable and painful consequences of conduct have been at work, so as to include not the life of the individual only, but also that of the race. Conscience is a species of instinct analogous to the retrieving disposition in a well-bred game dog. It embodies the experiences of pleasure and pain felt during the numberless ages of the gradual evolution of man. These, it is asserted, have been by degrees organized and accumulated through Natural Selection, and transmitted by heredity from parent to offspring in the form of physiological modifications. The theory thus claims to reconcile the Moral Sense doctrine with that of the Benthamite school; or at all events to combine the elements of truth supposed to be contained in both. On the one hand, it recognizes the native or instinctive character of moral intuitions and sentiments, whilst on the other it ultimately bases all moral distinctions on the pleasurable and painful consequences of action, and teaches that Conscience is a complex product derived from these latter.

Criticism. As this account of the Moral Faculty forms part of the general theory of the Origin of Necessary Truth advocated by Evolutionist Psychology, we refer the reader back to our discussion of the wider subject. Here, however, we may observe in addition: (1) that the new hypothesis is exposed to all the most weighty objections advanced against the old Associationist doctrine, except that based on the readiness with which moral cognitions are elicited, and the early age at which they appear; (2) that moral intuition is not of the nature of a sensitive instinct, but of an intelligent apprehension; (3) finally, that Conscience or ethical notions are the most unlikely product that can well be conceived to arise by Natural Selection. Even in tolerably civilized stages of society, the utility of moral sensibility to the individual in the struggle for life is very problematical. A fortiori amid the internecine war and conflict of the supposed pre-human stage, where, in the words of Hobbes, "fraud and force" are the "cardinal virtues," the chances should be enormously against the development of self-sacrifice.17

17 Concerning the authority left to conscience in this account of its genesis, Mr. Balfour writes thus: "Kant, as we all know, compared the Moral Law to the starry heavens, and found them both sublime. It would, on the naturalistic hypothesis, be more appropriate to compare it to the protective blotches on the beetle's back, and to find them both ingenious. But how, on this view. is the beauty of

The fact that within a tribe or nation some of the moral virtues are of evident advantage in the struggle with other tribes makes no real difference, unless we assume, against the whole teaching of evolution, the sudden causeless appearance of the moral instinct throughout the majority of the individuals of the tribe. If " the weakest to the wall" is the one supreme Law of Nature, if Natural Selection is the great force of evolution, then the occasional individuals varying slightly in the direction of conscientiousness would be inevitably eliminated in the perpetual struggle for existence within the limits of their own savage tribe, before the dubious utility of their incipient moral dispositions could be extended to the tribe as a whole, and render it superior to other less moral races. If an unprejudiced mind considers how intensely difficult it is, even at the present day, when we are in possession of all the moralizing agencies of religion, education, language, literature, public opinion, and governmental authority, to quicken the moral sensibility of the individual or of the nation, he must surely see that in the alleged pre-human stage, when not a single one of these forces were present, and when the conditions of existence combined unanimously in the opposite direction, the natural growth of conscience must have been absolutely impossible.18

holiness' to retain its lustre in the minds of those who know so much of its pedigree? In despite of theories, mankind—even instructed mankind-may, indeed, long preserve uninjured sentiments which they have learned in their most impressionable years from those they love best; but if, while they are being taught the supremacy of conscience and the austere majesty of duty, they are also to be taught that these sentiments and beliefs are merely samples of the complicated contrivances, many of them mean and many of them disgusting, wrought into the physical or into the social organism by the shaping forces of selection and elimination, assuredly much of the efficacy of these moral lessons will be destroyed, and the contradiction between ethical sentiment and naturalistic theory will remain intrusive and perplexing, a constant stumblingblock to those who endeavour to combine in one harmonious creed the explanations of Biology and the lofty claims of Ethics." (Op. cit. pp. 18, 19.)

18 Mr. Lecky has justly remarked that, "Whether honesty is or is not the best policy, depends mainly on the efficiency of the police," a social factor seemingly not very perfect in those prehistoric times of which Herbert Spencer affords us such detailed information. Bain argues forcibly that "the Moral Sentiment is about the least favourably situated of all mental products for transmission by inheritance." The chief grounds on which he does so are: (1) Comparative infrequency of special classes of moral acts