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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 
soul's capacity which present themselves for our earnest study. 
These are, feeling , idea , and will. 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. 
Wliat, 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 could 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.! 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. 
