46 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



directing 1 all our actions," to quote Adam Smith, " to promote 

 the greatest possible good, in submitting all inferior affections 

 to the desire of the general happiness of mankind, in regarding 

 one's-self but as one of the many, whose prosperity was to be 

 pursued no further than it was consistent with, or conducive to, 

 that of the whole, consisted the perfection of virtue." But one 

 circumstance alone (mentioned by Dugald Stewart) is almost 

 decisive against this theory it fails to account for such virtues 

 as those of gratitude, veracity, and justice. These virtues all 

 depend, in a greater or less degree, upon the relations subsisting 

 between the agent and some one else, which could not be con- 

 sidered to make any difference in the action if its merit depended 

 solely upon the amount of good or benefit to some one else 

 intended by the person who performed it. 



But omitting, for the present, any further consideration of 

 the nature of virtue, there remains, as already stated, the 

 question, how is it that we come to approve of virtue and dis- 

 approve of vice ; in other words, the question of the theory of 

 morals, or the existence and origin of a moral faculty which 

 approves some actions and disapproves others. 



That there is such a faculty in our nature, few schools of 

 philosophers have been found to deny ; and those who have 

 done so have failed in the arguments by which they have 

 attempted to maintain their theory. The assertion that we are 

 not so constituted as to approve of the class of actions called 

 virtuous, and to disapprove of the opposite class, and that 

 habit would, after a while, induce us just as readily to praise 

 the latter and blame the former, is repugnant to the evidence 

 which every thinking man finds, upon reflection, in his own 

 mind. It is quite true that a long course of vice may so harden 

 a man as that he may find greater pleasure in a vicious than a 

 virtuous course of conduct ; but yet there is, for all that, a 

 feeling in his mind which, however he may refuse to listen to 

 it, condemns him for so doing. We cannot do better than 

 quote Bishop Butler's summary upon this matter, in his " Dis- 

 sertation on the Nature of Virtue." "We have," he says, "a 

 capacity of reflecting upon actions and characters, and making 

 them an object to our thought ; and on doing this, we naturally 

 and unavoidably approve some actions, under the peculiar view 

 of their being virtuous and of good desert ; and disapprove 

 others, as vicious and of ill desert. That wo have this moral 

 approving and disapproving faculty is certain, from our expe- 

 riencing it in ourselves, and recognising it in each other. It 

 appears from our exercising it unavoidably in the approbation 

 and disapprobation even of feigned characters, from the words 

 right and wrong, odious and amiable, base and worthy, with 

 many others of like signification in all languages applied to 

 actions and characters ; from the many written systems of 

 morals which suppose it ; . . . from our natural sense of 

 gratitude, which implies a distinction between merely being the 

 instrument of good, and intending it ; from the like distinction 

 every one makes between injury and mere harm, which Hobbes 

 says is peculiar to mankind, and between injury and just 

 punishment, a distinction plainly natural, prior to the con- 

 sideration of human laws." 



The existence, however, of such a faculty naturally leads to 

 another question with which it sometimes is confused, that of its 

 origin ; and those who are quite agreed that it exists as a con- 

 stituent element of our present nature, may differ widely as to 

 how it came to be so. According to some, our perception of 

 right and wrong is to be referred to a peculiar principle of our 

 mind, which perceives these qualities in a manner similar to 

 that in which our senses perceive the qualities of external 

 things ; and so they have given it the name of the " moral 

 sense." Others hold that the distinction between right and 

 wrong is perceived by the same intellectual faculty which dis- 

 covers truth in the mathematical and kindred sciences, i.e., the 

 reason ; while others, again, have attempted to resolve our 

 moral faculty into some other more general or simpler notion 

 of our nature, such as the "association of ideas." 



Let us now suppose that we are witnesses of the doing of a 

 good or bad action (e.g., of gratitude or cruelty), and let us try 

 to analyse the feelings to which it gives rise in our minds. 



First of all, then, we are conscious that the action is right or 

 wrong, as the case may be ; i.e., we feel that it conforms to or 

 violates some rule already existing in our minds by which we 

 are accustomed, without any effort, to judge actions, and by 

 reference to which we pronounce them virtuous or vicious. The 



mode in which this rule or standard comes to be in our mind 

 we are not at the moment conscious of ; all we feel is that it is 

 there ; it requires further reflection to ascertain its origin. 



This origin, according to Cudworth, is to be found in the 

 reason ; in which he was opposed to Hobbes, who, holding that 

 all human knowledge consisted in what was perceivable by the 

 senses, maintained that right and wrong were unreal, as they 

 could not be so perceived. Cudworth considered that the dis- 

 tinction between right and wrong, so far from being a mere 

 chimera, was perceived by the same faculty of the mind which 

 perceived the distinction between a triangle and a square, or 

 between truth and falsehood. Hence, to quote Adam Smith, 

 " it became the popular doctrine, that the essence of virtue and 

 vice did not consist in the conformity or disagreement of human 

 actions with the law of a superior, but in their conformity or 

 disagreement with reason, which was thus considered as the 

 source and principle of approbation and disapprobation." And 

 this system, which made it an absolute contradiction in terms 

 to state that any power could change the eternal and immutable 

 distinctions between right and wrong, was considered to have 

 established morality upon a solid and unchangeable basis. In 

 this Cudworth was followed by Clarke, one of whose school even, 

 went the length of asserting that " morality is the practice of 

 reason." 



Hutcheson, however, referred the distinction between right 

 and wrong to a peculiar power of perception originally implanted 

 in our nature, to which he gave the name of the " moral sense," 

 which has been continued as a philosophical term ever since. 

 Understanding by sense a capacity of receiving ideas, together 

 with pleasures and pains, from a particular class of objects, he 

 said that " all the ideas or the materials of our reasoning or 

 judging are received by some immediate powers of perception, 

 internal or external, which we may call senses. Reasoning or 

 intellect seems to raise no new species of ideas, but to discover 

 or discern the relations of those received." And moral ideas 

 were nothing more than a distinct class of these. 



Now our senses, it is admitted, do not inform us of realities 

 in the external objects perceived through their means ; but 

 merely signify a power or capacity in the object to affect us in 

 a certain manner, to produce a certain effect on our minds. 

 What is really meant by the expression " The fire feels hot " is 

 not that our senses inform us of heat as something really 

 existing in the fire, but only that there are certain effects pro- 

 duced on our senses by the fire at the particular time, which we 

 have agreed to call by the name "heat." This is the almost 

 universally received doctrine in modern times. Once, therefore, 

 it was laid down that right and wrong are perceived in exactly 

 the same manner as the heat of the fire (to adopt the common 

 but unphilosophical mode of expression), it was easy to say, 

 that one did not signify a reality any more than the other, that 

 each arose from an arbitrary relation between our constitution 

 and particular objects of sense, and that right and wrong were 

 nothing in the acts denominated virtuous or vicious, and con- 

 sequently could not in any other sense be held eternal or 

 immutable. 



We cannot, therefore, adopt the exact meaning which Hut- 

 cheson has given to the phrase "moral sense," inasmuch as, 

 whatever name be given to the faculty by which wo get moral 

 ideas and perceive the ideas of right and wrong, these ideas 

 must be held to be simple ideas arising immediately in our 

 minds upon witnessing or learning the performance of an action, 

 and the words must be held to denote qualities in the acts 

 themselves, and not merely feelings produced by them in us. 

 If this be granted, it is of minor importance what name be 

 given to the mental faculty which takes cognisance of them. 



INDUSTRIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY 

 OF COMMERCE. 



CHAPTEB III. FIRST COMMERCIAL PERIOD PRIMITIVE 

 LAND TRADE (continued). 



PHOENICIA. 



PHCENICIA, the most famous of the commercial nations of the 

 ancient world, took part in overland, river, and maritime 

 trade. Its position in the Levant gave it the command of 

 the Mediterranean. This sea was the scene of its earliest enter- 

 prises, and from the countries on its shores were obtained those 



