Analysis of Dr, Hancock* s theory, 75 



Creator, as well as our desire of self-preservation, our love of so- 

 ciety, &c. ? If those judgments be not instinctive^ I should be 

 glad to know how they become universal : — If those judgments be 

 not instinctive^ I should be glad to know liow men find it so 

 difl&cult, or rather impossible, to lay them aside.' — ' Morality is 

 founded on certain first principles.' — ' I do not say,' observes 

 Beattie in another place, ' that any particular moral principle is 

 innate^ or that an infant brings it into the world with him : this 

 would be as absurd as to say that an infant brings the multiplica- 

 tion table into the world with him. But, I say that the moral 

 faculty which dictates moral principles, and the intellectual fa- 

 culty which ascertains proportions of quantity and number, are 

 original parts of man's nature ; which, though they appear not at 

 his birth, nor for some time after, even as the ear of corn is not 

 seen till long after the blade is sprung up, fail not, however, pro- 

 vided outward circumstances be favourable, to disclose themselves 

 in due season.' " 



And at the corhmencement of his work, Dr. Hancock has the 

 following definitions. 



" It is proper, for me here to remark," he says, '' that the 

 word Reason is used in senses which are extremely different; 

 sometimes to express the whole of those powers which elevate man 

 above the brutes, and constitute what is called his rational nature; 

 more especially, perhaps, his intellectual powers; and sometimes 

 to express the power of deduction or argumentation. The former 

 is the sense in which the word is used in common discourse. It is 

 in the latter restricted sense, that I wish the word Reason to be 

 understood, wherever it occurs in this Essay, viz. the discursive 

 faculty, wholly depending on outward evidence for its conclu- 

 sions. Hence, if there be any actions which are performed with 

 every indication of design, forethought, and wisdom, which are 

 not the result of instruction nor of individual experience, but of a 

 power operating above the consciousness of the creature, and di- 

 recting it with unerring certainty to some specific ends, by means 

 far beyond its comprehension, whether in man or in the brute; 

 these actions are instinctive. And on the other hand, if there be 

 any actions, which evidently result from observation and instruc- 



