CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



the existence and attributes of God, it seems a 

 natural sequel to examine, whether morality also 

 has not an independent foundation in nature ; 

 in other words, to examine on what grounds of 

 reason, and without reference to any supernaturally 

 revealed will, men have, in all ages and countries, 

 judged some actions to be right, and others 

 wrong, and have felt an obligation to do the one, 

 and refrain from the other. This, which forms 

 the theoretical part, or philosophy, of morals, we 

 can afford to consider only in the briefest manner 

 merely noticing a few of the leading questions 

 that fall to be considered. 



Have -we a Moral Sense f This question meets 

 us on the threshold, and divides speculative 

 moralists into two schools. One school hold 

 that we have such a sense a sense that discerns 

 between right and wrong, as the eye does between 

 black and white, or the nerves of sensation between 

 hot and cold. The same thing is implied in such 



Ehrases as 'the instinctive love of virtue and 

 atred of vice,' and 'the intuitive perception of 

 right and wrong.' Against this view it is argued, 

 that if our moral perceptions were made through a 

 special faculty, men would uniformly, in all ages 

 and countries, approve certain actions, and dis- 

 approve certain others. But this is far from 

 being the case. There is scarcely, as has been 

 remarked, a single vice which, in some age or 

 country of the world, has not been countenanced 

 by public opinion. In one country, it is esteemed 

 an office of piety in children to sustain their aged 

 parents ; in another, to despatch them out of the 

 way. Theft, which is punished by most laws, by 

 the laws of Sparta was not unfrequently rewarded. 

 Among the Jews, polygamy was quite reputable, 

 and was at least tolerated by the Mosaic law ; 

 among Christian nations, it is punished as a crime. 

 In short, moral approbation seems to follow the 

 fashions and institutions of the country we live in, 

 and to depend on the notions instilled into us by 

 education, and on other circumstances, many of 

 them, it may be, accidental Those that argue 

 thus are far from denying the reality of the dis- 

 tinction among actions as right or wrong, or from 

 holding that it depends on the arbitrary opinions 

 of men. On the contrary, they maintain as 

 strongly as their opponents that some actions are 

 in themselves right, and others in themselves 

 wrong, independently of what may be thought of 

 them. They only deny that men are born with 

 the faculty of instinctively or intuitively discerning 

 this difference in actions ; and hold that they must 

 learn it, as they learn the qualities of other things 

 in the universe, by experience. According to this 

 view, it is the experience of the consequences of 

 actions, accumulating from age to age, that has 

 worked into the general mind of the civilised races 

 sentiments, more or less deep, of approbation of 

 some actions, and of reprobation of others. This 

 experience is handed down from generation to 

 generation ; and every individual as he grows up 

 imbibes the general views and feelings inde- 

 pendently of his own experience. 



Not that these sentiments are always well 

 founded. Men make often great mistakes as to 

 the sources of what they enjoy and suffer, attrib- 

 uting particular effects to any causes but the right 

 one ; hence thos"e frequent contradictions between 

 the moral maxims of different nations, to which 

 we have already alluded. It required far-seeing 



380 



thinkers and rulers, speaking often in the name 

 Heaven, and commanding the general attention 

 to that will of the Creator which the mass of men 

 could not or would not read as He had written it 

 on His works it required all this to open men's 

 eyes to their short-sighted judgments, overcome 

 their selfishness and indifference, and lead them, 

 often unwittingly and unwillingly, to make trial of 

 ways of acting more in accordance with the laws 

 of well-being. The result of a long succession of 

 efforts of this kind is, that many of the early 

 errors and prejudices of moral judgment have 

 been eliminated, and that among civilised nations 

 everywhere there is a decided concurrence of 

 opinion and sentiment regarding most of the 

 leading points of human conduct. This account 

 of the origin of our moral judgments, by shewing 

 the natural tendency of experience and knowledge 

 to correct them, has the great advantage of 

 encouraging all efforts for the intellectual culti- 

 vation of the race, and of opening up a pros- 

 pect of endless improvement. If, on the other 

 hand, these judgments are of the nature of in- 

 stinct or intuition, it is difficult to conceive how 

 they are to be improved, or how any science of 

 morals is possible. 



The difficulties attending the doctrine of an 

 innate moral sense, when that doctrine is rigor- 

 ously followed out, are so great, that its advocates 

 have always qualified it by admitting the necessity 

 of enlightening the conscience by religious and 

 moral teaching. The individual conscience is 

 allowed to be a standard of morals only by virtue 

 of its representing or reflecting 'the common 

 conscience of mankind, by which benevolence, 

 justice, truth, purity, and wisdom, are recognised 

 as the supreme law of man's being.' But this 

 only brings us back to the point from which we 

 started. How were those current maxims of 

 morality forming the common conscience of man- 

 kind formed? They cannot be admitted to be 

 matter of mere taste or feeling in the race, any 

 more than in individual men ; and the only 

 account that can be given of them is, that they 

 have been learned in the manner of experimental 

 truths. 



Moral End Chief Good. Every practical 

 science proposes some end, or aim, and then 

 addresses itself to the ways and means of attain- 

 ing that end. Thus, navigation is a practical 

 science with a distinct and well-defined aim 

 namely, to cross the seas with speed and safety ; 

 and a treatise on navigation consists of a body of 

 knowledge so arranged as to shew the way to this 

 end. The first step, then, in a scientific system of 

 morals, is to define the end to be aimed at. It 

 seems agreed on all hands that the end of all 

 moral rules is the chief good of mankind ; but 

 this conception is by far too general and vague 

 to be of much use ; and one of the chief obstacles 

 in the way of putting morality on a satisfactory 

 scientific foundation, is the difficulty of fixing 

 more definitely in what that chief good consists. 



It will be admitted that the chief good of an 

 individual man must embrace, among other things, 

 his preservation and health, with the means and 

 circumstances necessary to develop and give full 

 scope for the exercise of all his faculties and 

 affections ; for thus only can an animated being 

 derive full satisfaction from his existence. On the 

 assumption, then, that well-being is the legitimate 



