20 
I will not, therefore, seek the origin of the moral thought 
in “ intuition,” and hence cannot associate the moral sense 
with such intuition. I would just as soon seek the origin of 
my capacity of hearing in an innate or intuitive sound. The 
moral thought is really a judgment, the result, like all other 
judgments, of reasoning, and that, too, of reasoning for which 
man is responsible, inasmuch as he ever may, within certain 
limits, conduct that reasoning as he will. The moral idea, 
when it is reached in the soul, finds more or less, as a rule, the 
capacity of feeling ready to receive it as a moral sense. Just 
as sound finds hearing, or light finds vision, so right and 
wrong find this peculiar capacity, and in the degree in which 
the capacity exists and the idea is presented, in that degree is 
there the moral affection now in hand. 
Here, then, I must remark that there is nothing in man so 
inseparably connected with morals as will. Voluntarily the 
moral idea may be cultivated to a high degree, or obliterated. 
So may the moral sense, like that of hearing, or any other. 
By certain processes a man may destroy the susceptibility of 
any so-called outward sense, and so may he destroy that of 
this so-called inward moral sense. Tappan says, “We know 
we are exercising will when we have this presentation in the 
consciousness; viz., certain phenomena, and I myself the 
cause of these phenomena, either immediately or by instru- 
mentality.” * Cause here does not mean a mere link in the 
chain of occurrences. The use of the word in such a sense is 
an absurdity. It is so because, if the word cause is equally 
applicable to all such links, it is .absurd to use it as if appli- 
cable to one alone. John Stuart Mill says, that “ a volition is 
a moral effect which follows the corresponding moral causes 
as certainly and invariably as physical effects follow their 
physical causes. Whether it must do so, I acknowledge 
myself to be entirely ignorant, be the phenomena moral or 
physical. All I know is that it always does .” f Mr. Mill 
should have said, “ so far as I have observed and choose to 
remember ! ” — that is, he can know that effects, such as we 
call volitions, follow what he calls their causes certainly and 
invariably, so far as he has observed and chooses to remember 
the facts he has noticed. It is really childish to talk as if he 
could possibly settle the truth in relation to the whole universe, 
and for all eternity, that volitions always follow the experiences 
he calls their “ causes.” He can know that in a few cases 
which he has observed, certain volitions follow the presenta- 
* Tappan On the Will, ed. London, 1860, pp. 196, 197. 
t Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy , ed. 1865, p. 501. 
