324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



However, my point now is simply to remark how far the right 

 honorable professor then was from assigning "motive'* as the 

 one essential character of a good action. Most certainly, neither 

 sympathy nor affection is always moral, and as to unconscious 

 beneficent actions, I remarked, and repeat. How can a man " love 

 justice " if he can not distinguish it from injustice ? Can he ap- 

 preciate " mercy " without knowing it ? 



A calculating boy who does not understand arithmetic can not 

 be projjerly termed an arithmetician, whatever his automatic 

 power of rendering solutions may be. But my opponent not only 

 took the opposite view to this, but went still further; for he 

 wrote : * 



If a machine produces the effects of reasoning, I see no more ground for deny- 

 ing to it the reasoning power because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing to 

 Mr. Babbage's engine the title of a calcuhiting machine on the same grounds. 



It would be hardly possible to imagine a better illustration of 

 the absence of discrimination between what is merely " material " 

 and what " formal " in reasoning ; and this defect runs singularly 

 parallel with the absence of a like discrimination the discrimi- 

 nation as to motives in the domain of ethics on the part of Prof. 

 Huxley in 1871. 



Finally, so complete was then his identification of " duty " with 

 " pleasure," that, when attempting to assume, for the moment, the 

 position of an " absolute moralist," he wrote : f 



To do your duty is to earn the approbation of your conscience or moral sense; 

 to fail in your duty is to feel its disapprobation, as we all say. Now is appro- 

 bation a pleasure or a pain ? Surely a pleasure. And is disapprobation a pleas- 

 ure or a pain ? Surely a pain. Consequently all that is really meant by the 

 absolute moralists is that there is, in the very nature of man, something which 

 enables him to be conscious of those particular pleasures and pains. 



Inasmuch, therefore, as Prof. Huxley would then have said 

 that the proper object of life is to do one's duty, he must likewise 

 have thereby meant that its object also was to escape from the 

 pain and sorrow consequent on its non-fulfillment. Such is the 

 necessary consequence of identifying an ethical perception (a mat- 

 ter of intellect) with a " feeling." 



But it is not a fact that every perception of duty performed, 

 and recognized as such, is necessarily pleasurable ; nor every con- 

 sciousness of duty similarly violated, a painful experience. 



In a perfect nature, of course, moral sentiments will always 

 harmonize with ethical perceptions. But who is perfect ? To do 

 right is ofteri a labor and a sorrow, and it is certainly not less 

 meritorious on that account. 



* Loc. clL, p. 281. \ P. 289. 



