virtue as such. He does not hate justice as justice, truth as truth, benevolence as benevolence. He recognizes their inherent rightness, he asserts their importance, he admires their excellency, he is pleased with their exhibition in other men, even though he violate them all. The fall did not take away one essential element of man's rational, spiritual being, though it perverted, and gave a wrong direction to them all. Man is still "the image and glory of God "* in his reason, his intelligence, his dominion, though not in his disordered passions and his will. He must still have the same ideas of right as dwell in the Infinite mind. He must affirm the same moral judgments. He must feel the same satisfaction. and joy in beholding and choosing the right as is felt by God. 4. The universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in human history, languages, legislation and sentiments, bear testimony to the fact that the ideas of right, duty, and moral desert are native to the human mind.

That there is a native tendency in the human mind to discriminate the quality of actions, and to affirm moral distinctions, will not be denied. It is unquestionable that, in presence of voluntary actions, we at once recognize them as having a moral quality. We characterize some as good, others as bad; some as right, others as wrong. We know that one class ought to be performed, the other ought not. We feel that when we have performed the wrong act we deserve blame and punishment, and when we have performed the right act we deserve approval and reward.

That such moral distinctions have been made, and such moral judgments have been passed in all ages, and by all men -the old and the young, the learned and the ignorant, the savage and the civilized-is attested by the history, languages, laws, philosophies, traditions, religions, common sentiments, and usages of universal humanity.

The question to be decided, then, is simply this, "Are these moral judgments intuitive?" and if so, "are they based upon fundamental ideas of right, duty, and demerit, native to the human mind ?"

The marks and criteria by which INTUITIONS are to be recognized are, 1, they are self-evident, and need no proof; 2, they

* 1 Cor. xi, 7.

are necessary, and must be believed; 3, they are universal. When apprehended they are believed by all.

Moral distinctions have all these marks and peculiarities of intuitive truths, therefore they are native intuitions of the mind. Moral distinctions are self-evident. They are seen in their own light, and rest upon their own evidence. The distinctions between justice and injustice, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, are at once perceived on the bare contemplation of them. They are not deduced from any previous propositions or premises, they are not established by any reasoning, and they are incapable of demonstration. No explanations can make them clearer, no arguments can make them stronger than when first apprehended. No man ever attempts to prove first it is wrong for any one to take away his property without his consent, and without furnishing him a just equivalent. He simply affirmed that it is wrong, and that is a sufficient reason for all intelligent beings. It finds a response in the universal conscience of the race.

Moral distinctions are necessary. The laws of our intelligence compel us to affirm them as real and immutable. The contrary cannot be conceived, or if conceived, it is absurd. It is as impossible to believe that there are intelligences to whom injustice can appear right, or falsehood appear a virtue, as to conceive that there are beings to whom two and two equals five, or a part equals the whole. "The distinctions between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, are just as fixed and necessary as the distinction between a straight line and a curved line, or between body and space. The law of duty is just as fixed and as absolute as are the mathematical relations." We speak of mathematical as eternal truths. The epithet is apt and just. There can be no contradiction and no alteration in them. They depend upon no arrangement of matter, upon no distribution of forces. Were there no heavens and no earth for their diagram, were there no created intelligences to demonstrate them, they would be the same. So we reason concerning moral distinctions. Their standard and reason are found in eternal justice. We can as easily conceive of a square ceasing to have angles, or a circle without a center, as we can conceive of moral distinctions as having a beginning, or *Tappan.

that they can come to an end. They are normal and imperishable.

Moral distinctions are universal. They are the same in every case and to every being, so that when the same facts and relations are apprehended, the affirmations of conscience in all moral agents are the same.

The criterion or law by which a necessary moral principle is determined to be a universal principle is, the impossibility of our not erecting it into a maxim of universal legislation.*

And inasmuch as the ideas of right and wrong exist in all rational minds, and have to all minds the same characteristics of being self-evident and necessary, and as each moral agent cannot but affirm that the same law which binds him does and must bind all other intelligents, it follows that when the same facts and relations are apprehended, the same law, in its essential forms, must be known to, and bind the conscience of all moral beings.

The human mind affirms obligation, not only for itself, but for all rational beings. Whatever I am bound in justice to render to my neighbor, is that which he is also bound to render unto me. Whatsoever I would that man should do unto me, that is what I am required to do unto him. My own moral judgments are but the echo of the conscience of the moral universe. Now, as the conscience of each moral agent legislates not only for itself, but for other intelligents, affirming with as much confidence what is their duty as what is its own, and as we cannot but feel that such is the conscience of every other moral agent, we have in this fact an explanation of the universal conviction and sentiment of moral accountability. Every man knows-cannot but know-himself as accountable, not only at the bar of his own conscience, but of that of every other intelligent for his moral conduct."+ We feel they have a right to inquire into the reasons of our conduct. When we have done right, we feel we have a right to the moral esteem of all intelligent beings; when we have done wrong, we feel the condemnation of our fellow-men is just.

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Moral distinctions have then the characteristics of self-evi

dent, necessary, and universal truth. Now, the ultimate ground of all moral judgments is the fundamental ideas of the * Cousin: "True, Beautiful, and Good," page 300.

+ Mahan.

reason.

A judgment is the affirmation of an agreement or disagreement. The subject and the predicate can only be compared by a middle term with which both must agree, or with which one agrees and the other disagrees. That middle term in the case before us must be an idea of pure reason, or, in other words, it must be native to all minds, because all minds affirm moral distinctions. If, then, moral distinctions are necessary and universal, the ideas of the just, the true, and the good, upon which they are based, must also be universal; they are native to all minds.

In opposition to the doctrine of the universality of moral distinctions and moral ideas, it is affirmed that reason or conscience does not enounce a uniform suffrage; its dictates are widely divergent, sometimes contradictory.

We are told by Mr. Watson that "so far as mere reason has applied itself to the discovery of duty it has generally gone astray." ""There was little agreement among the sages of antiquity, even upon the first principles of morals." "The fundamental principles in morals... were either held doubtfully, or connected with some manifest absurdity, or utterly denied by the wisest moral teachers among the Gentiles who lived before the Christian revelation was given." "There is," says Locke, "scarce that principle of morality to be named, or rule of virtue to be thought on, which is not somewhere or other slighted and condemned by the general fashion of whole societies of men, governed by practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to each other." Paley affirms "there is scarce a single vice which in some age or country has not been countenanced by public opinion. In one country it is esteemed an office of piety in children to sustain aged parents, in another to dispatch them out of the way; suicide in one age of the world has been called heroism, in another felony; theft, which is punished by most laws, by the laws of Sparta was not unfrequently rewarded. You shall have dueling alternately reprobated and applauded, according to the sex, age, or station of the person you converse with: the forgiveness of insults and injuries is accounted by one sort of people magnanimity, by another meanness."+ "One nation regards it as the greatest barbarity

*"Theological Institutes," vol. i, page 33.

"Moral and Political Philosophy," book i, chap. v.

to hurt an infant, while infanticide was practiced and justified among the polite and civilized Athenians, and the Hindoo mother still sacrifices her infant to her idol god."* And because there is a diversity of opinion and of action among men, it is argued that conscience is the mere creature of education, and there is no correct standard of right in the human mind.

This mode of reasoning is not caricatured, but fairly stated in other words-because men have not uniformly practiced the right, therefore they have not had the idea of the right; inasmuch as men have not obeyed conscience, therefore conscience has not taught men what right is; because the sophist has prevaricated with conscience, and often suborned it to crime; because the clamors of passion have sometimes overborne and stifled the voice of conscience; because "public fashion" or "public opinion" in one country or age has been in favor of evil, therefore conscience does not enounce a uniform suffrage! -its utterances are contradictory!

We are led to wonder that it has never occurred to the minds of those who are perpetually employing this argument to disparage conscience-" the voice of God in man"-that this is precisely the mode of reasoning whereby sceptics are endeavoring to disparage inspiration—" the voice of God in Scripture."

They tell you there is scarce a crime which has not been committed in the name of religion, and scarcely a virtue enjoined in the Scriptures which has not, in one age or another, been slighted and disregarded by the public opinion or fashion of Christian nations. Men professing, believing, and teaching Christianity have been guilty of murder, infanticide, polygamy, adultery, and every other conceivable crime. Did not the Roman Catholic appeal to Scripture in proof that it was his solemn duty to persecute and burn all heretics? and did not he believe he was doing God service? Did not the Puritan seek for precedents to guide his ordinary conduct in the Books of Judges and of Kings, and sing with unwonted fervor the imprecatory Psalms? "The prophet who hewed in pieces a captive king; the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs; the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith and of the laws of hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the * Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments," page 5, chap. ii. FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVI.-2