400 
them with actual experience, and we should be constrained 
to say “ 0 Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me . 
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou under- 
standest my thoughts long before. Thou compassest my path, 
and art acquainted with all my ways.” * In the parables 
and addresses too, recorded in the Gospels, the Founder of 
Christianity appealed to the springs of human action in such 
a manner that we cannot fail to see the truth of that state- 
ment, “ He needed not that any should testify of man ; for 
He knew what was in man ” f Even judged from a human 
point of view only, our Lord's knowledge of human nature 
was marvellously perfect or philosophical. And as ethical 
facts and revelation here agree, so it may be said that the 
difference among men is small as regards the place these 
springs or primary motives occupy in our moral nature. 
Plato's little state or republic had its appetites and passions 
to trouble it, its “ irrational parts,” the “ unruly wills and 
affections” of the Prayer-book, where will is used in the 
sense of desire , as Priestley, Bentham, James Mill, and Dr. 
Brown have erroneously used it — but the disturbances occa- 
sioned by these parts of human nature have been such as 
to call for the interference of the police officer rather than 
the philosopher. It is when we come to the higher regula- 
tive powers of reason and conscience, and the nature of 
virtue, that we find philosophers most at variance with each 
other. 
THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES OF MORAL ACTION. 
The springs of action excited, it is the office of the higher 
powers to regulate human conduct, reason giving to man a 
sense of prudence, enabling him, that is, to select right means, 
and conscience giving to him a sense of duty, or aiding him 
in the selection of right ends. 
It will not, I presume, be expected that I should here enter 
into all the points of disputation that have arisen in reference 
to the nature and functions of reason and conscience. Aristotle 
was right when he separated morality from what is strictly 
intellectual or speculative. The reason, of course, has an 
office to fill, but in morals it is directive, not motive, practical, 
not speculative. How far it enters into the subjective opera- 
tions of the conscience or moral faculty I will not take upon 
me to say further than this, that it seems to hold a posterior 
* Ps. cxxxix. 
f John ii. 24, 25. 
