672 PSYCHOLOGY. 



metaphysical principles as those just considered, there is 

 a mental structure which expresses itself in 



ESTHETIC AND MORAL PRINCIPLES. 



The aesthetic principles are at bottom such axioms as 

 that a note sounds good with its third and fifth, or that 

 potatoes need salt. AVe are once for all so made that when 

 certain impressions come before our mind, one of them will 

 seem to call for or rej)el the others as its companions. To 

 a certain extent the principle of habit will explain these 

 aesthetic connections. When a conjunction is repeatedly 

 experienced, the cohesion of its terms grows grateful, or at 

 least their disruption grows unpleasant. But to explain all 

 aesthetic judgments in this way would be absurd ; for it is 

 notorious how seldom natural experiences come up to our 

 aesthetic demands. Many of the so-called metaphysical 

 principles are at bottom only expressions of aesthetic feel- 

 ing. Nature is simple and invariable ; makes no leaps, or 

 makes nothing but leaps ; is rationally intelligible ; neither 

 increases nor diminishes in quantity ; flows from one prin- 

 ciple, etc., etc., — Avhat do all such principles express save 

 our sense of how pleasantly our intellect would feel if it 

 had a Nature of that sort to deal with ? The subjectivity 

 of which feeling is of course quite compatible with Nature 

 also turning out objectively to be of that sort, later on. 



The moral principles which our mental structure en- 

 genders are quite as little explicable in toto by habitual 

 experiences having bred inner cohesions. Eightness is not 

 mere usualness, wrongness not mere oddity, however numer- 

 ous the facts which might be invoked to prove such identity. 

 Nor are the moral judgments those most invariably and 

 emphatically impressed on us by public opinion. The 

 most characteristically and peculiarly moral judgments 

 that a man is ever called on to make are in unprece- 

 dented cases and lonely emergencies, where no popular 

 rhetorical maxims can avail, and the hidden oracle alone 

 can speak ; and it speaks often in favor of conduci 

 quite unusual, and suicidal as far as gaining popular 

 approbation goes. The forces which conspire to this 

 resultant are subtle harmonies and discords between the 



