SCIENCE. 



103 



is not human conduct in its mere outward manifestations, 

 for the only moral element in human conduct is its actuat- 

 ing motive. If any human action is determined not by 

 any motive whatever, but simply by external or physical 

 compulsion, then no moral element is present at all, and j 

 no perception of the Moral Sense can arise respecting it. | 

 Freedom, therefore, in the sense of exemption from 

 such compulsion, must be assumed as a condition of hu- 

 man action absolutely essential to its possessing any moral 

 character whatever. There can be no moral character in 

 any action, so far as the individual actor is concerned, 

 apart from the meaning and intention of the actor. The 

 very same deed may be good, or, on the contrary devilishly 

 bad, according to the inspiring motive of him who does it. 

 The giving of a cup of cold water to assuage suffering, and 

 the giving it to prolong life in order that greater suffering 

 may be endured, are the same outward deeds, but 

 are exactly opposite in moral character. In like man- 

 ner, the killing of a man in battle and the killing of a man 

 for robbery or revenge, are the same actions ; but the one 

 may be often right, whilst the other must be always 

 wrong, because of the different motives which incite the 

 deed. Illustrations of the same general truth might be 

 given as infinite in variety as the varying circumstances 

 and conditions of human conduct. It is a truth perfectly 

 consistent with the doctrine of an Independent Morality, 

 Every action of a voluntary agent has, and must have, its 

 own moral character, and yet this character may be sepa- 

 rate and apart from its relation to the responsibility of the 

 individual man who does it. That is to say, every act 

 must be either permitted, or forbidden, or enjoined, by le- 

 gitimate authority, although the man who does it may be 

 ignorant of the authority or of its commands. And the 

 same proposition holds good if we look upon the ultimate 

 standard of morality from the Utilitarian point of view. 

 Every act must have its own relation to the future. Every 

 act must be either innocent, or beneficent, or hurtful 

 in its ultimate, tendencies and results. Or, if we like to 

 put it in another form, every act must be according to the 

 harmony of Nature or at variance with that harmony, and 

 therefore an element of disorder and disturbance. In all 

 these senses, therefore, we speak, and we are right in 

 speaking of actions as in themselves good or bad, because 

 we so speak of them according to our own knowledge of 

 the relation in which they stand to those great stand- 

 ards of morality, which are fact and not mere assump- 

 tions or even mere beliefs. But we are quite able to 

 separate this judgment of the act from the judgment 

 which can justly be applied to the individual agent. As 

 regards him, the act is right or wrong, not according 

 to our knowledge, but according to his own. And 

 this great distinction is universally recognized in the 

 language and (however unconsciously) in the thoughts of 

 men. It is sanctioned, moreover, by Supreme Authority. 

 The most solemn prayer ever uttered upon earth was a 

 prayer for the forgiveness of an act of the most enormous 

 wickedness, and the ground of the petition was specially 

 declared to be that those who committed it " knew not 

 what they did." The same principle which avails to di- 

 minish blame, avails also to diminish or extinguish merit. 

 We may justly say of many actions that they are good in 

 themselves, assuming, as we naturally do, that those 

 who do such actions do them under the influence of 

 the appropriate motive. But if this assump- 

 tion fails in any particular case, we cannot and we do 

 not, credit the actor with the goodness of his deed. If 

 he has done a thing which in itself is good in order to 

 compass an evil end, then, so far as he is concerned, the 

 deed is not good, but bad, It may indeed be worse in 

 moral character than many other kinds of evil deeds, 

 and this just because of the goodness usually attaching 

 to it. For this goodness may very probably involve the | 

 double guilt of some special treachery, or some special j 

 hypocrisy; and both treachery and hypocrisy are in the 

 highest degree immoral. It is clear that no action, how- I 



ever apparently benevolent, if done from some selfish or 

 cruel motive, can be a good or a moral action. 



It may seem, however, as if the converse of this pro- 

 position cannot be laid down as broadly and as de- 

 cidedly. There are deeds of cruelty in abundance which 

 have been done, ostensibly at least, and sometimes, 

 perhaps, really from motives comparatively good, and 

 yet from which an enlightened Moral Sense can never 

 detach the character of wickeJness and wrong. These 

 may seem to be cases in which the motive does not de- 

 termine the moral character of the action, and in which 

 our Moral Sense persists in condemning the thing done in 

 spite of the motive. But if we examine closely the 

 grounds on which we pass judgment in such cases, we 

 hall not, I think, find them exceptions to the rule or 

 law that the purpose or intention of a free and volun- 

 tary agent is the only thing in which any moral good- 

 ness can exist, or to which any moral judgment can be 

 applied. In the first place, we may justly think that the 

 actors in such deeds are to a large extent themselves 

 responsible for the failure in knowledge, and for the de- 

 tective Moral Sense which blinds them to the evil of their 

 conduct, and which leads them to a wrong application of 

 some motive which may in itself be good. And in the 

 second place, we may have a just misgiving as to the sin- 

 gleness and purity of the alleged purpose which is 

 good. We know that the motives of men are so 

 various and so mixed, that they are not al- 

 ways themselves conscious of that motive which 

 really prevails, and we may have often good reasons for 

 our convictions that bad motives unavowed have really 

 determined conduct for which good motives only have 

 been alleged. Thus, in the case of religious persecution, 

 we may be sure that the lust of power and the passion of 

 resentment against those who resist its ungovernable de- 

 sires, have very often been the impelling motive, where 

 nothing but the love of truth has been acknowledged. 

 And this at least may be said, that in the universal judg- 

 ment of mankind, actions which they regard as wrong 

 have not the whole of that wrongfulness charged against 

 the doers of them, in proportion as we really believe the 

 agents to have been guided purely and honestly by their 

 own sense of moral obligation. 



On the whole, then, we can determine or de- 

 fine with great clearness and precision the field 

 within which the Moral Sense can alone find 

 the possibilities of exercise — and that field is 

 the conduct of men ; — by which is meant not their actions 

 only, but the purpose, motive, or intention by which the 

 doing of these actions is determined. This conclu- 

 sion, resting on the firm ground of observation and ex- 

 perience, is truthfully expressed in the well-known lines 

 of Burns: — 



" The heart's aye the part aye 

 Which makes us right or wrang." 



And now it is possible to approach more closely to 

 the great central question of all ethical inquiry : — 

 Are there any motives which all men under all 

 circumstances recognize as good ? Are there any other 

 motives which, on the contrary, all men under all 

 circumstances recognize as evil ? Are there any fun- 

 damental perceptions of the Moral Sense upon which 

 the standard of right and wrong is planted at the first, 

 and round which it gathers to itself, by the help of every 

 faculty through which the mind can work, higher and 

 higher conceptions of the course of duty? 



(To be continued.) 



Physiological Effects of Glycerin. — Chemically pure 

 glycerine if injected under the skin of dogs proves fatal 

 within twenty-four hours if the dose reaches 8 to 10 grms. 

 per kilo, of the weight of the animal. The symptoms are 

 comparable to those of acute alcoholism.— M M. Beaumetz 

 and Audige. 



