6 
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, but 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 
{C 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. 
