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perception of utility^ but in those facts of our experience which 

 are inseparably associated with ideas and feelings of right 

 and wrong, or with duty and its opposite. 



In this region of inquiry there are three great features of the 

 souPs capacity which present themselves for our earnest study. 

 These are, feeling, idea, and xvill. In search of a sense we 

 might perhaps confine ourselves to the first of these ; but to 

 have a satisfactory conception of a moral sense, we must con- 

 sider all the three. This will appear as we proceed. 



What, then, is a sense ? In order to furnish the answer to 

 this question in a satisfactory way_, let us take one or two of the 

 ordinary senses. First of all we shall look at that of hearing. 

 There is a certain vibration of the atmosphere ; the wavelets 

 of this motion reach the aural nerve ; we may imagine (though 

 we are not sure that any one can) some other affection than 

 that called a vibration into which these wavelets pass as they 

 enter the nerve or brain itself ; but nothing of this kind can 

 even be thought of as a sensation. The finest movement of 

 matter is just as different from a feeling of mind as any one 

 thing can be different from another. The capacity of move- 

 ment and that of sensation are utterly diverse, and in the 

 case before us are demonstrably separable. 



Hutchison rightly remarks that sensations bear no more 

 resemblance to the external reality which is the means of pro- 

 ducing them, than the report of a gun or the flash of powder 

 bears to the distress of a ship.-'^* In the life of Beethoven, 

 the great German musician,we learn that he composed his finest 

 music after he had become stone-deaf. Harmonies that now 

 charm the most critical listeners were created in his soul when 

 he had no organ by which external song tiould reach it. In 

 search of a sense, then, we must look for that capacity by which 

 this master-mind could inwardly hear when vibrations reaching 

 him so as to pass into sensations were impossible. That 

 capacity is the sense of hearing. Air may be made to vibrate, 

 and nerve may be affected in some way which is as different 

 from vibration as light is from heat ; but mind alone can hear. 



It may be well that this should be more deeply impressed 

 upon us. Take, then, the sense of smell. What is that 

 which we call the sweetness of a rose ? According to the best 

 authorities, it is only a movement, like that of sound and all 

 other affections of matter. f Let us suppose that we could get 

 a microscope sufficiently powerful to enable us to see an odour. 

 Would the material movement which we could then see have 



* Hutchison's Moral Philosophy, ed. 1755, p. 5. 

 t See Grove, On the Correlation of Forces. 



