THE CEREBRUM, AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 815 



the notion of a (rod sustaining any direct relation to us, involves the notion of 

 Duty, which attaches itself to all actions with which he can be considered as 

 having any concern, the dictates of this sense will vary with the ideas enter- 

 tained respecting the character and requirements of the Deity ; and actions may 

 be sincerely regarded as an acceptable 'sacrifice by one class of religionists, which 

 are loathed as barbarous and detestable by another. Moreover, in what have 

 been designated as " cases of conscience," the most enlightened Moralist may 

 have a difficulty in deciding what is the right course of action, simply because 

 the moral sense finds so much to approve on both sides that it cannot assign a 

 preponderance to either. And the same difficulty attends the determination of 

 Duty, in many peculiar contingencies j each of two or more possible modes of 

 action being recommended by its conformity to the divine law on certain points 

 whilst it seems opposed to it on others. Thus, individuals in whose characters 

 the love of truth and of justice and the benevolent affections are the prominent 

 features, and who would shrink with horror from any violation of these princi- 

 ples of action for any selfish purpose whatever, are sorely perplexed when they 

 are brought into collision with each other ; a strong motive to tell a falsehood 

 being presented by the desire to protect a defenceless fellow-creature from un- 

 merited oppression or death. 1 If, then, neither the Moral Sense nor the Sense 

 of Religious Duty affords a clear and unvarying rule of action in each individual 

 case, it is evident that the determination of what is right and wrong must be a 

 matter of judgment ; the rule of Moral action being based on a comparison of 

 the relative nobility of the motives which impel us to either course, and being 

 decided by the preference which is accorded to one motive or combination of 

 motives above another. 2 If it be asked how are the relative values of these 



1 Thus, if a man, who might be urged to conceal a fugitive slave near the Canadian front- 

 ier, were to refuse to do so merely on the fear of unpleasant consequences to himself, 

 he would be justly branded with the character of a cold-hearted coward; but if his refusal 

 should proceed from the conviction that the divine law requires the preference of rigid 

 truthfulness over every other motive, and that, by concealing the suppliant he should be 

 forced into a violation of that law, he cannot be blamed even by those who believe that 

 the law of compassion written upon our hearts is at least equally imperative. Similar 

 difficulties beset the upholders of the non-resistance creed, which teaches that love is the 

 all-powerful principle in the moral world, and that it should entirely supersede all those im- 

 pulses of our nature which lead us to oppose force to force, and to resist an unjust and unpro- 

 voked assault. Here, again, we might readily understand and sympathize with those who 

 consider that the fear of personal suffering does not warrant our doing a severe injury to 

 another in warding off a threatened attack; but when the question comes to be, not of 

 se//-defence, but of protection to others who are helpless dependents upon our succor, 

 and who are bound to us by the closest ties of natural affection, we feel that the com- 

 parative nobility of the latter motive warrants actions which our individual peril might 

 scarcely justify. 



2 This view of the nature of Conscience will be found more fully developed in the 

 "Prospective Review" for November 1845, pp. 587-9. "Every moral judgment," it is 

 well remarked by the reviewer, "is relative,- and involves a comparison of (at least) two 

 terms. When we praise what has been done, it is with the coexistent conception of some- 

 thing else that might have been done ; and when we resolved on a course as right, it is to 

 the exclusion of some other that is wrong." This is why we cannot attach any moral 

 character to the actions of animals that are performed under the direction of a blind 

 undesigning instinct, leaving them no choice between one course and another ; nor to those 

 which are executed by human beings, even when possessed of their full intelligence, 

 under the domination of impulses which they have it not in their power to restrain ; nor, 

 again, to those performed by individuals whose moral sense has either never been awak- 

 ened, or has been so completely misdirected by early education, that their standard of 

 right and wrong is altogether opposite to that which the enlightened conscience of mankind 

 agrees in adopting. But, although there are doubtless many cases in which criminal actions 

 are committed under the impulse of passions (such as anger, lust, &c.) which the individual 

 has not at the moment the power to control, and although he must be absolved from moral 

 responsibility quoad the immediate motives of those particular actions, yet these motives 



