His True Law of Self-conservation.

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the moral commonwealth; although this be proved and admitted, yet it might still be maintained that enlightened Utilitarianism and the general happiness ought to be the sole standard of right and wrong. But from what has been said we think it will appear that it is too narrow and incomplete for a sole standard. What standard then, it may be asked, do we propose? The sole standard proper for man, we should say, is the Will of God. Of course it may be urged that this is vague; or it will be said that the general happiness can be the sole criterion of it. This, however, we deny-it is undoubtedly one criterion-our own happiness is undoubtedly also one criterion.

But such virtues as justice and gratitude carry their own sanction involved in their very idea; they appear good and fitting, irrespective of their consequences. Again, acquiescence in, endeavour after, and sympathy with-even the dark dispensations of Providence, though we may not see how they conduce to our own or the general happiness, this, surely, is a part of Duty. We feel it to be right and fitting, under the circumstances, irrespectively of its being for our happiness. But it is pretty clear that he will be the happiest person who does not unduly make happiness an object. And further, the course of Duty sometimes proves a rack on which the best and purest affections are stretched and wrung. Does not happiness in that case lie in the other track? But the virtuous, it is urged, finds his satisfaction in this. Because he prefers virtue to happiness, or general satisfaction for himself, he prefers a particular kind, and this not as satisfaction, to a greater amount. Yet even he craves a fuller satisfaction than this. A believer in Revelation looks for it beyond the grave, and indeed so does any believer in personal immortality. This, however, need not hinder him from choosing virtue as virtue. A highly virtuous man will choose torture and death rather than dishonour, even if he can believe in no hereafter. Yet that may be for the happiness of the race-general happiness. But a man's virtue may produce for himself only contempt among the knaves with whom he associates, and may seem utterly impotent to reform or benefit them; while it may be of no apparent use to any one concerned Revelation apart, and we are treating moral science, not theology. It may often seem of no use to people's happiness that one man should be much better than the ordinary run of men. It may be argued that ultimately, under favourable circumstances, virtue and happiness must always be coincident; we may expect that this will be so some day; but this is far off, at times it will seem problematic, and so not always a safe

ultimate standard. Yet justice and gratitude, whatever their consequences, are still felt to be fit and right, therefore the will of God in every case for every man. Nor is this to deny that in particular instances our conduct ought to be modified by a shrewd estimate of what course is most likely to benefit particular persons. Let it be understood what is meant by the axiom, Virtue is its own reward. Virtue always receives moral elevation of nature and the satisfaction thereof for reward. Vice is always punished with moral deterioration-by no means always -with temporal losses. On the contrary, moderate vice, which does not startle society by violating those conventional usages and proprieties which serve the world instead of virtue, does not shock it by running out of the particular rut authorized by the rumbling of many respectable vehicles, either into any special track of virtue or any special track of vice, undoubtedly often proves a successful speculation enough, so far as worldly prosperity goes. But the more complete moral insensibility, the greater is the punishment. Pain in a half-drowned body is the sign of returning life: the wages of sin is death, death and degradation of the human spirit. So we fall back on the old motto, Fais ce que dois, advienne ce que pourra.' Still, we are disposed to admit that the general happiness principle is a good working principle on the whole, if it be taken as a bond fide standard.

But now let it be admitted, and clearly understood, that conscience is not (according to any wise anti-utilitarian) a faculty of discerning à priori and at once, in the sense of forbidding any appeal to reasoning calculation of consequences and generalization of accumulated experience, whether a given action be right or wrong. It is debated whether it be a part of reason or not. If by reason be meant intuition, the faculty by which we discern first principles, then conscience may be called, as Kant calls it, the Practical Reason. It is analogous to the sense of physical beauty: it discerns the To Kaλov in the human will. But the notion that this can always be discerned off-hand without careful consideration of circumstances and consequences, particular and general, is a notion which seems to us almost more foolish and mischievous than the opposite error of utilitarians. The Just too often resolves itself into any narrow and prejudiced fancy a person may happen to adopt or to have received from his nurse, and to agree with neighbours as foolish as himself to transmit to their children with all the marvellous yet irrational weight of public opinion, custom, and fashion to sanction it. The Moral Sense pronounces according to the materials furnished to it by the understanding and the

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sentiments. And in proportion as those materials are imperfect or ample, will be the justness and correctness of the moral judgment in any specific instance. We first deem actions right or wrong at second-hand, according to what our elders have taught; but when we exercise our judgment independently, we feel them to be right or wrong in themselves, or we decide for ourselves, in view of their effects on ourselves and on others, whether they are right or wrong. But without a knowledge of effects and a calculation of them in particular instances, or without the sentiments about which the moral sense is concerned-as, for instance, those of love, sympathy, compassion, resentment, courage, energy, the particular private desires and aspirations, as well as the general craving for happiness. without all this material, the moral sense will lack data upon which to proceed and to found a sober and judicious verdict. is plain, therefore, that it is a part of Duty to cultivate all our capacities, that we may be able to know our duty. But this is a most vitally important part of duty which is almost entirely neglected. The most conscientious people do not appear to see the sin of starving their consciene. They have the false and fatal notion that conscience can pronounce off-hand and without instruction or cultivation on questions of duty; and their judgments, while unenlightened, prejudiced, and narrow, have all the bigotry and dogmatism of conscience shrouded in the dark, in place of the bland and serene authority of conscience nourished in the light. And surely men and women as often go wrong, bring misery upon themselves and others needlessly, harmfully-from blindly following the dictates of a conscience they have never seen the duty of enlightening; from applying, it may be, some general maxim to some particular case to which it is in truth inapplicable, as from disregarding the dictates of their conscience. Still, let us hold to the law within' at any cost; let us follow the glimmer of light we have; for that shall lead us to the full daylight at last. 'If any man will do His will he shall know of the 'doctrine.'

But questions as to the mutual relations of the sexes are more apt than any to be thus decided off-hand; as if the moral nature of this or that connection were discernible at a glance-whereas plainly an appeal to physiology, besides other general as well as special considerations, is required to decide accurately some of the moot and intricate points involved. An Asiatic will only regard dogmatic assertion and pious exclamations of horror on certain points, as expressive of the idiosyncracy of a race. You must convince his moral sense by argument. Sensual pleasures

are provided by nature-the problem is to assign to them their proper place.

This principle, well considered, will furnish the answer to those objectors who urge that there can be no right or wrong per se, no moral sense to inform us of it, seeing that men in different times and places, and the same men at different periods of their lives, differ as to what is right and what is wrong. It might quite as well be argued that because a zoophyte's, a bird's, a dog's, a child's, a stupid stranger's, and a sympathizing friend's estimate of a full-grown man varies, therefore the full-grown man does not exist per se, but exists only in proportion as these varying intelligences comprehend him. There is in the nature of things a course of conduct which conduces to a man's welfare, and that of the race. How the utilitarian ever can dispense with the belief that there is in the nature of things a course which being pursued leads to happiness, we do not understand. If there be not, if it is all subjective,'-that is, we suppose, dependent on each man's private fancy-why does he give us so many rules for the pursuit and attainment of it? We do not profess to understand Mr. Mill's or any one else's ridicule of Things per se.' The expedient, the desirable, is not that something? No one, or nobody of any weight, supposes that the right for man, his duty, exists by itself up somewhere quite aloof from human consciousness. A man's duty is what is good for him to be and do. But there are certain immutable laws in man's consciousness, certain invariable antecedent and consequent phenomena, which of all men empirical thinkers ought to be the last to ignore. We must say we do not think that Mr. Mill fairly meets the objection, that if a person can be persuaded that a restraining conscience is only a feeling in his own mind—and not a feeling having its root in, and deriving its sanction from the nature of things, that is, from the immutable and fundamental laws of spirit, and so essential to its very being-he may easily be led to conclude that if the feeling be inconvenient he may get rid of it or disregard it. The moral sense claims to be what Kant calls the Categorical Imperative;' and though it is nearly impossible to judge of the effect of certain definite opinions in individual cases, if any opinion can be pronounced generally injurious in its effect, it must be that which ignores or denies this attribute of authority in the governing principle of

our nature.

For this governing principle, viewed ontologically, can be no other than the highest expression of the will of God concerning us-the very voice of God in the spirit of each, pointing out the appointed way for each. And however relatively weak or un

True place of the Principle of Expediency.

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enlightened it may be at any particular moment, it is still in its own nature this. It is not in fault, but rather the absence of it, the contempt of it shown either in opposition to it, or neglecting to inform and enlighten it-the unfavourable educational circumstances in the midst of which it speaks. But we are to remember that even now the moral education of the race is incomplete, that we are not ourselves so enlightened as our posterity may be, but that error and suffering are the appointed means for the progressive education of the moral sense. God reveals Himself to us little by little; and because at any given. moment we do not see Him perfectly, we are not to deny that we have ever seen Him at all.

We hold that while happiness is a right and proper object of pursuit for man, he has the privilege of extending his view, enlarging his scope, and making the order of the universe, the will of God, the object of his sympathy, the end of his aspiration. To learn this, and conform himself so far as may be to it, we hold to be the end of his life. He must seek from all available sources of information what the ideal life for him may be, and in dependence on Him who is the source of it (looking to Him who has manifested it in a human life external to his own; for since virtue is a living concrete thing, it must be loved and embraced in a concrete living example), he must strive to attain to it; ever ready, however, to have his view of it enlarged and corrected. We spoke of the possibility of recognising in suffering and death, and even in moral evil, the minister of God's grand purpose. But we think it right to guard against any possible misapprehension of our meaning. We are not to do evil that good may come. We are bidden by the law within above all things to guard against moral deterioration in ourselves or others; above all things to strive after moral improvement. What we are to recognise is that God may educe good out of evil-this we can recognise sometimes, and to a certain extent. But this is the very opposite of saying that we ought to think little of moral deterioration, in which state we should become incapable of recognising any such thing. Our failures are often the condition of our strength, but not if we deliberately intend to fail, or do not strive to conquer. The law of self-conservation-taken in the high sense we have given to the phrase-for a conscious being can never bid him submit to a moral injury or deterioration. If the principle of dissolution be permitted to take effect in a conscious moral being, it is a contradiction to assert that this conscious moral being ought ever, on any pretence, to adopt this principle of death as his law of action. His part must ever be to adopt the contrary law of life. And the great men