102 



SCIENCE. 



trary to their sense of obligation. Indeed we shall see 

 good reason to believe that this not only may be so, but 

 must be so. But this is a separate subject of inquiry. 

 The distinction in principle is manifest between the sense 

 itself and the laws by which its particular applications 

 are determined. 



The second of the two things to be defined — namely, 

 the sense in which any faculty whatever of the mind can 

 really be regarded singly, or as uncombined with others 

 — is a matter so important that we must stop to con- 

 sider it with greater care. 



The analogy is not complete, but only partial, between 

 the analysis of Mind and the analysis of Matter. In 

 the analysis of Matter we reach elements which can be 

 wholly separated from each other, so that each of them 

 can exist and can be handled by itself. In the analysis of 

 Mind we are dealing with one organic whole ; and the 

 operation by which we break it up into separate faculties 

 or powers is an operation purely ideal, since there is not 

 one of these faculties which can exist alone, or which can 

 exert its special functions without the help of others. 

 When we speak, therefore, of a Moral Sense or of Con- 

 science, we do not speak of it as a separate entity any 

 more than when we speak of Reason or of Imagination. 

 Strictly speaking, no faculty of the mind is elementary in 

 the same sense in which the elements of Matter are (sup- 

 posed to be) absolutely simple or uncombined, Perhaps 

 there is no faculty of the mind which presents itself so dis- 

 tinctly and is so easily separable from others as the facul- 

 ty of Memory. And yet Memory cannot always repro- 

 duce its treasures without an effort of the Will, nor, some- 

 times , without many artificicial expedients of Reason to 

 help it in retracing the old familiar lines. Neither is there 

 any faculty more absolutely necessary than Memory to the 

 to the working of every other. Without Memory there could 

 not be any Reason, nor any Reflection nor any Conscience. 

 In this respect all the higher faculties of the human mind are 

 much more inseparably blended and united in their opera- 

 tion than those lower faculties which are connected with 

 bodily sensation. These lower faculties are indeed also 

 parts of one whole, are connected with a common centre, 

 and can all be paralyzed when that centre is affected. 

 But in their ordinary activities their spheres of action 

 seem widely different, and each of them can be, and often 

 is, seen in apparently solitary and independent action. 

 Sight and taste and touch and hearing are very different 

 from each other — so separate indeed that the language 

 of the one can hardly be translated into the language of 

 the other. But when from these lower faculties, which 

 are connected with separate and visible organs of the 

 body, and which we possess in common with the brutes, 

 we ascend to the great central group of higher and more 

 spiritual faculties which are peculiar to Man, we soon find 

 that their unity is more absolute, and their interdepend- 

 ence more visibly complete. Ideally we can distinguish 

 them, and we can range them in an ascending order. We 

 can separate between different elements and different pro- 

 cesses of thought and in accordance with these distinc- 

 tions we can assign to each of them a separate faculty of 

 the mind. We think of these separate faculties as being 

 each specially apprehensive of one kind of idea, or specially 

 conducting one kind of operation. Thus the reasoning 

 faculty works out the process of logical sequence, and ap- 

 prehends one truth as the necessary consequence of an- 

 other. Thus the faculty of Reflection passes in review 

 the previous apprehensions of the Intellect, or the fleeting 

 suggestions of Memory and of Desire, looks at them in 

 different aspects, and submits them now to the tests of 

 reasoning, and now to the appreciations of the Moral 

 Sense. Thus, again, the supreme faculty of Will deter- 

 mines the subject of investigation, or the direction of 

 thought, or the course of conduct. But although all these 

 faculties may be, and indeed must sometimes be, conceived 

 and regarded as separate, they all more or less involve 

 each other; and in the great hierarchy of powers, the 



highest and noblest seem always to be built upon the 

 foundations of those which stand below. Memory is 

 the indispensable servant of them all. Reflection is ever 

 turning the mind inward on itself. The logical faculty is 

 ever rushing to its own conclusions as necessary conse- 

 quences of the elementary axioms from which it starts, and 

 which are to it the objects of direct and intuitive apprehen- 

 sion. The Moral Sense is ever passing its judgments upon 

 the conduct of others and of ourselves ; whilst the Will is 

 ever present to set each and all to their proper work. And 

 the proper work of every faculty is to see some special 

 kind of relation or some special quality in things 

 which other faculties have not been formed to 

 see. But although these qualities in things are 

 in themselves separate and distinct, it does not at all 

 follow that the separate organs of the mind, by which 

 they are severaliy apprehended, can ever work without 

 each other's help. The sense of logical necessity is clearly 

 different from the sense of moral obligation. But yet as 

 Reason cannot work without the help of Memory, so nei- 

 ther can the Moral Sense work without the help of Rea- 

 son. And the elements which Reason has to work on in 

 presenting different actions to the judgment of the Moral 

 Sense may be, and often are, of very great variety. It is 

 these elements, many and various in their character, and 

 contributed through the help and concurrence of many 

 different faculties of the mind that men are really distin- 

 guishing and dissecting when they think they are analy- 

 zing the Moral Sense itself. What they do analyze with 

 more or less success is not the Moral Sense, but the 

 conditions under which that Sense comes to attach its 

 special judgments of approval or of condemnation to par- 

 ticular acts or to particular motives. 



And this analysis of the conditions under which the 

 Moral Sense performs its work, although it is not the kind of 

 analysis which it often pretends to be, is nevertheless in the 

 highest degree important, for although the sense of obli- 

 gation, or, as it is usually called, the Moral Sense, may be 

 in itself simple, elementary, and incapable of reduction, it 

 is quite possible to reach conclusions of the most vital 

 interest concerning its nature and its functions by exam- 

 ining the circumstances which do actually determine its 

 exercise, especially those circumstances which are nec- 

 essary and universal facts in the experience of mankind. 



There is, in the first place, one question respecting the 

 Moral Sense which meets us at the threshold of every in- 

 quiry respecting it, and to which a clear and definite an- 

 swer can be given. This question is — What is the sub- 

 ject-matter of the Moral Sense? or, in other worda, what 

 is the kind of thing of which alone it takes any cogni- 

 zance, and in which alone it recognizes the qualities of 

 right and wrong ? 



To this fundamental question one answer, and one an- 

 swer only can be given. The things, and the only things 

 of which the Moral bense takes cognizance are the actions 

 of men. It can take no cognizance of the actions of ma- 

 chines, nor of the actions of the inanimate forces of Na- 

 ture, nor of the actions of beasts, except in so far as a 

 few of these may be supposed to possess in a low and ele- 

 mentary degree some of the characteristic powers of Man. 

 Human conduct is the only subject-matter in respect of 

 which the perceptions of the Moral Sense arise. They 

 are perceptions of the mind which have no relation to any- 

 thing whatever except to the activities of another mind 

 constituted like itself. For, as no moral judgment can be 

 formed, and no moral perception can be felt, except by a 

 moral agent, so neither can it be formed in respect to the 

 conduct of any other agent which has not, or is assumed 

 not to have a nature like our own — moral, rational and 

 free. 



And this last condition of freedom, which is an essential 

 one to the very idea of an agency having any moral char- 

 acter, will carry us a long way on toward a farther defini- 

 tion of the subject-matter on which the Moral Sense is ex- 

 ercised. It is as we have seen, human conduct. But it 



