190 



any resemblance either to the seeing or to the smelling of 

 which we should be sensible ? Suppose again^ that a person 

 looking through the microscope and seeing the odour^ had no 

 sense of smell, would he be able to form the least notion of 

 what smelling is as a feeling from the sight ? Clearly, never. 

 Hence there is no meaning for the word sense, or sensation, 

 discoverable till you are beyond the material, which is capable 

 of vibration or other movement, into that which cannot vibrate 

 or move, hut can feel. 



This brings us close to the object of which we are now in 

 search. If there be a feeling as real as that of hearing or 

 smelling, which is as certainly the effect of the idea of right 

 or wrong as the sensations of hearing and smelling are the 

 results of sounds and odours, in that feeling we have the 

 moral sensation, and in the capacity of it in the soul we have 

 the moral sense. A glance at human experience shows us that 

 there is such a moral sensation, and its existence implies the 

 moral capacity for it. This sense is not equally keen in all 

 men, any more than is that of hearing. It is even absent in 

 some men, like that of seeing or any other sense ; but just as 

 certainly is it in man as man as either hearing or seeing can 

 be. It is by fixing the truth of this capacity firmly in the 

 mind as an indisputable fact of human consciousness^ like that 

 of any other sense, that we are placed in a position to review 

 satisfactorily a world of conjecture as to the nature and destiny 

 of man. 



It may probably occur to some here to think that it is a 

 mistake to call the capacity of feeling under consideration a 



sense,^^ and a still greater mistake to call the feeling itself 

 a sensation.-'^ Hutchison, who introduced the phrase 

 " moral sense,^^ and those who have followed him in its use, 

 regard it as expressing what he calls a higher power of 

 perception. They regard all the senses as having the 

 nature of intellectual faculties rather than as mere capacities 

 of impression. Mr. Hutchison uses the word sensation,''^ 

 however, as expressive of the effect produced through the 

 moral sense. He says, " The approbation of moral excellence 

 is a grateful action or sensation of the mind.-'-'f I am shut up 

 to use the word for a stronger reason than that on which Mr. 

 Hutchison used it, inasmuch as I regard the capacity as one of 

 feeling, and not of perception. The affection is identical with 

 each of those of the senses, as an impression of the nature of 

 feeling, and nothing more. The sensation is moral because it 

 is the immediate effect of a moral idea, just as sight is optical 



Hutchison's Moral Philosophy, p. 24. 



t Ibid., p. 53, 



