GENESIS OF HOEAL SENTIMENTS. 13 



the &quot; parentage for morals,&quot; but the parentage of moral 

 sentiments. In his version of rny view on this more spe 

 cial doctrine, Mr. Hutton has similarly, I regret to say, 

 neglected the data which would have helped him to draw 

 an approximately true outline of it. It cannot well be 

 that the existence of such data was unknown to him. 

 They are contained in the &quot; Principles of Psychology ; &quot; 

 and Mr. Hutton reviewed that work when it was first 

 published. 1 In the chapter on The Feelings, which occurs 

 near the end of that work, there is sketched out a pro 

 cess of genesis by no means like that whicli Mr. Hutton 

 indicates ; and had he turned to that chapter he would 

 have seen that his description of the genesis of the moral 

 sentiments out of organized experiences is not such a one 

 as I should have given. Let me quote a passage from 

 that chapter: 



&quot;Not only arc those emotions which form the immediate stimuli 

 to actions thus explicable, but the like explanation applies to the 

 emotions that leave the subject of them comparatively passive : as, 

 for instance, the emotion produced by beautiful scenery. The grad 

 ually increasing complexity in the groups of sensations and ideas co 

 ordinated, ends in the coordination of those vast aggregations of 

 them which a grand landscape excites and suggests. The infant 

 taken into the midst of mountains is totally unaffected by them ; 

 but is delighted with the small group of attributes and relations pre- 

 oented in a toy. The child can appreciate, and be pleased with, tho 

 more complicated relations of household objects and localities, the 

 garden, the field, and the street. But it is only in youth and mature 

 age, when individual things and small assemblages of them have 

 become familiar and automatically cognizable, that those immense 

 assemblages which landscapes present can be adequately grasped, 

 and the highly aggregated states of consciousness produced by them, 

 experienced. Then, however, the various minor groups of states, 

 that have been in earlier days severally produced by trees, by fields, 



1 His criticism will be found in the National Review for January, 1856, 

 under the title &quot; Atheism.&quot; 



