1 20 Moral actions are mental ones. 



feet or how rude the literature of the ancient and 

 the modern world, the indestructible instincts of the 

 human soul, the testimony of consciousness, unite 

 to affirm that the human will is independent of 

 natural law." " The will is a supernatural power." 

 "I myself am not under the dominion of natural law;" 

 " my moral life is essentially a supernatural thing." 

 " As soon as you approach the intellectual and 

 moral life of man, you enter a region in which you 

 have to do with a new order of facts." &c.* 



Morality, the subject of duty, or of right and wrong- 

 doing in conscious creatures, is usually considered to 

 relate only to those actions over which a man has or 

 might have had control, and which it was his duty 

 either to perform or avoid, and not to those which 

 are entirely beyond his influence, it is therefore 

 essentially dependent upon the power of selection or 

 choosing. As then all moral actions require voluntary 



/? choice between right and wrong, and every act of 

 choice is a mental one of comparison of two or more 



(^things, all moral actions are mental ones. We cannot 

 compare things which have not made .any mental 

 impression upon us. We know further, and the 

 evidence already given proves, that mental actions 

 are intimately dependent upon the principles of nature 

 operating within and around us. If then all acts of 

 morality (or immorality) are mental ones, and if all 



1 mental actions are intimately dependent upon the 

 great principles of nature ; then all acts of morality 



* "The Mutual Relations of Physical Science and Religious Faith." 



