A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 



51 



that this information, if rightly apprehended, is 

 trustworthy, as far as it goes ; that there are 

 objective realities corresponding with it. The 

 moral sense, believed in, is not merely a possible, 

 but I suppose it to be the only possible, human 

 foundation of morality. An intelligent belief in 

 the moral sense naturally takes the man beyond 

 himself, to a higher source of his moral concep- 

 tions, which it really presupposes ; and any truths 

 correlative to it, which are either ascertainable 

 by the processes of reason, or capable of being 

 otherwise made known, will naturally, when they 

 become known, be recognized, in their proper re- 

 lation to it, and cannot be rejected without doing 

 it violence. Any such correlative knowledge of 

 the higher truths (to the existence of which the 

 moral sense testifies, though it does not fully re- 

 veal them) must enlighten, inform, and strength- 

 en it. It is the office of such knowledge to an- 

 swer authoritatively those questions, as to the 

 real nature, the proper work, the true happiness, 

 the true place in the universe, of man, which phi- 

 losophy has always been asking, and has never, 

 by itself, been able to solve. It harmonizes, ac- 

 counts for, and enforces by authoritative sanc- 

 tions, the concurrent testimonies of the moral 

 sense, the religious instinct, Nature interpreted 

 by reason, and reason enlightened by experience. 

 On the other hand, the want, and still more the 

 rejection, of such knowledge (supposing it to be 

 attainable and true) must, in a corresponding de- 

 gree, obscure, perplex, or discredit, the moral 

 sense. 



I am well aware that some who seem to reject 

 all dogmatic theology, and even the principles of 

 natural religion, do nevertheless live up to a high 

 moral standard ; just as there are too many oth- 

 ers, professing (not always insincerely) to believe 

 in religion, who do the reverse. The moral sense 

 never has been, and never will be, extinguished 

 among mankind ; and in all ages and countries, 

 of which we have any real historical knowledge, 

 there have been conspicuous examples of men 

 who have made it their rule of life. Doubtless 

 there have been many more who did so, of whom 

 we know nothing ; nor is it unreasonable to be- 

 lieve that there may be many such even among 

 very degraded races. But these facts do not invali- 

 date general conclusions as to the general moral 

 tendency of a decline of religious belief. Those 

 examples of exceptional goodness have not been 

 sufficient to prevent or to arrest a progressive 

 deterioration of general morality when the light 

 of religion has been absent or obscured ; and the 

 best ancient schemes of philosophy, which were 



founded upon the moral sense, failed to compete 

 practically with that of materialism, which did 

 all that was possible to destroy it. " Live while 

 we may " — " let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 

 we die" — are natural corollaries from the doc- 

 trine of Epicurus ; whatever more refined con- 

 ceptions that philosopher or any of his followers 

 may have propounded. Such will ever be the ef- 

 fect, in the world generally, of a popular disbe- 

 lief in the doctrines of immortality and retribu- 

 tion ; not because the hope of rewards or the fear 

 of punishments is the foundation of religious mo- 

 rality (which, to fulfill the requirements either of 

 religion or of the moral sense, must ascend much 

 higher), but because our nature is so constituted 

 that the destiny of the individual, for good or 

 evil, for happiness or the reverse, is inseparably 

 bound up with the moral law of his being ; and 

 because those aids and defenses which result 

 from the recognition of this truth are necessary 

 for the ascendency of the higher over the lower 

 elements of our nature, and for the education of 

 man to virtue. A boy, whose mainsprings of 

 right action are conscience and love, will not en- 

 deavor to fulfill the objects for which he is sent 

 to school more selfishly, or from less worthy mo- 

 tives, when he is informed of their relation to bis 

 future life, than if he were left in ignorance of it ; 

 but the knowledge of that relation, by making 

 him understand the importance of the future as 

 compared with the present, and the meaning and 

 reasonableness of his present duties, may enable 

 him better to fulfill them. 



All that has been said assumes, of course, 

 that there is such a thing as religious truth : nor 

 is it possible to deny that, if this could really be 

 disproved, the morality founded upon it would 

 fail. But it cannot be without importance, when- 

 ever the proper evidences of the truth of religion 

 are considered, to take into account, as one of 

 them, its relation to morality : the certainty that, 

 if it were displaced, the system of morality now 

 received among men would, to a great extent, fall 

 with it ; and the extreme intellectual difficulty of 

 maintaining, in that event, the supremacy of the 

 moral sense, or placing the morality of the future 

 upon a new basis, likely to acquire general au- 

 thority among mankind. If it should be suggest- 

 ed that a sufficient moral code, for practical pur- 

 poses, might be maintained by increasing the 

 stringency of human laws in proportion to the 

 failure of religious sanctions, I should reply that 

 the power of human laws depends upon morality, 

 and not morality upon human laws ; and that any 

 legislation, greatly in advance of the moral senti- 



