266 Instinct. 



ing sense of obligation to do justly, are so essential 

 to the welfare of such a being as man is, and so es- 

 sential as a part of the means for carrying out that 

 social and moral system which the highest Reason 

 justifies, that they seem to be both given to man 

 to secure the action which is right in reference to 

 his highest end, even when there is no conception 

 of the good which they were intended to produce, 

 — as the instincts were given to the lower animals, 

 to secure certain actions essential to the life of the 

 individual or species, though the animal could have 

 no conception of the relation of the act to the ulti- 

 mate end to be attained. 



It is this kind of impulse, from a sense of obliga- 

 tion to perform certain acts, the good of which we 

 do not see, and which the judgment, at the time, 

 even pronounces against as a means of producing 

 the greatest happiness, that probably gives rise to 

 the notion that we feel under obligation to "do 

 right because it is right." It is plain that we feel 

 wider obligation to do certain acts, for the doing of 

 which we can give no reason except that zve feel the 

 obligation. And we shall find all such acts to be of 

 so fundamental a character, that it would be ruinous 

 to any system of moral government, if not destruc- 

 tive to the race, to leave them to arouse the sense 

 of obligation only when the production of good is 

 asserted of them by the judgment. But the acts 

 that follow this sense of obligation thus originating, 

 are, in their relation to a moral system, and the 

 highest end of man as connected with that system, 

 like those instinctive acts in the lower animals, 



