an evil because it is unjust, or because it is dishonest. But conscience draws the conclusion from the above premises: Therefore adultery is to be avoided."1

(2) We find similar views expressed by modern thinkers. Ralph Cudworth 2 regards knowledge as the product of an independent activity of the soul, or reason. "The intellection consists in the application of a given pattern thought, a ready-made category, to the phenomena and objects presented by experience. These categories or notions are a priori; they are the constant reflections of the Universal Reason, of God's mind." But they are not merely objects and products of the intellect, they form the nature or essence of things. All men have the same fundamental ideas. What is clearly and distinctly perceived is true. Among the truths which reason reveals to us are moral truths, which, like mathematical propositions, are absolute and eternal. But the soul is not a mere passive and receptive thing which has no innate active principles of its own. Good and evil, intuitive intellectual

1 Fit in animo vel in mente hominis quasi quidam syllogismus, cujus majorem præmittit synderesis dicens, omne malum esse vitandum. Minorem vero hujus syllogismi assumit ratio superior, dicens adulterium esse malum, quia prohibitum est a Deo, ratio vero inferior dicit, adulterium esse malum, quia vel est injustum vel quia est inhonestum. Conscientia vero infert conclusionem dicens et concludens ex supradictis, ergo adulterium est vitandum.

2 1617-1688. The title of Cudworth's book is characteristic of his standpoint: Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality.Selections in Selby-Bigge's British Moralists, Vol. II.

categories, convey more than knowledge, and are attended by an authority pleading with the will to move in a determinate direction. Moreover, the truths of mathematics and morals are as binding on God as they are on us; he must think and act like all rational beings.1

(3) Samuel Clarke 2 teaches that there are eternal and necessary differences and relations of things. The human differences are as obvious as the various sizes of physical objects, the fitness of actions and characters as obvious as the propositions of numbers and geometrical figures. Hence the moral truths, like the mathematical truths, belong to the sphere of eternal relations. The reason, divine and human, perceives these eternal differences and relations as they are. And just as no one can refuse assent to a correct mathematical proof, no one who understands the subject can refuse assent to moral propositions. "So far as men are conscious of what is right and wrong, so far they are under obligation to act accordingly." It is contrary to reason, contrary to the eternal order of nature, to do wrong. Indeed, it is as absurd as to try to make darkness. out of light, sweet out of bitter. To deny that I should do for another what he in the like case

3

1 For Cudworth, see especially Martineau, Types, Vol. II, Bk. II; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik; Sidgwick, History of Ethics.

2 1675-1729. Discourse concerning the Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion. — Selections from Clarke's ethical writings in Selby-Bigge's British Moralists, Vol. II.

3 Op. cit., pp. 184 ff.

D

should do for me, and to deny it, "either in word or in action," "is as if a man should contend that, though two and three are equal to five, yet five are not equal to two and three." God himself necessarily conforms his will to the laws of morals; his activity must be in accord with eternal right.1 (4) Henry Calderwood 2 belongs to the same school. We have, he says, an intuitive knowledge of the right and wrong. This knowledge is immediate, and its source is within the mind itself. "By direct insight a law is visible to us which cannot be inferred, but which regulates all inferences in morals within the area to which the law applies." The recognition of a general truth or principle of conduct is perception or intuition of the highest order. The power to recognize self-evident truth has been named Reason. Conscience, then, is that power by which moral law is immediately recognized, "it is reason discovering universal truth having the authority of sovereign moral law, and affording the basis for personal obligation." It is a cognitive or intellectual power, not a form of feeling, nor a combination of feelings; and it is vested with sovereign practical authority. This authority is found in the character of the truth which conscience reveals, not in the nature of the faculty itself. "This faculty is a power of sight, making a perception of self-evident truth possible to

1 See references under Cudworth; also Stephen, op. cit., Vol. II.

2 1831-1897. Handbook of Moral Philosophy.

man; but it contributes nothing to the truth perceived. To this truth itself belongs inherent authority, by which is meant, absolute right to command, not force to constrain."1

But if conscience discovers moral law to us, how is it that there exists such diversity of moral judgments among men? Calderwood maintains that there is a very general agreement as to the forms of rectitude, such as truthfulness, justice, benevolence. No nation places these virtues in the list of moral wrongs. But men differ as to the application of these principles.

Conscience cannot be educated. As well teach the eye to see, and the ear to hear, as to teach reason to perceive self-evident truth. But conscience can be trained in the application of the law, which can be known only through personal experience.

The foregoing thinkers practically agree in the answers which they give to our question, Why do men make moral judgments? Men judge as they do because they have an innate knowledge of morality, a knowledge not derived from experience, but inherent in the very nature of human reason. Reason immediately reveals to us moral truths, certain universal propositions which are as necessary and absolute as the truths of mathematics. Conscience

is an intuition of the reason (ratio). We may call

1 Handbook, Part I, chaps. iii and iv. To the same school belong Price, Reid, Stewart, Janet, Porter, and others.

the philosophers who adopt this view, rationalists or intellectualists, rationalistic intuitionists.

-

4. The Emotional Intuitionists. There are other philosophers who agree with the above that conscience is innate, but do not conceive it as a faculty of reason, as a faculty that pronounces universal and necessary judgments, like, Stealing is wrong, Benevolence is right. According to them we either feel or perceive that a particular act or motive is right or wrong when it is presented to us. We contemplate motives and acts, and pronounce judgment upon them when they are brought before consciousness, and we do this because we immediately and intuitively feel or perceive them to be right or wrong, not because we first compare them with an universal innate truth or proposition, delivered by the reason. Let us consider the advocates of this view under two heads. Let us call those who regard conscience as a form of feeling, as an emotional faculty, emotional intuitionists; and those who base it upon perception, perceptional intuitionists.1

1 Neither Shaftesbury nor Hutcheson draws a sharp distinction between feeling and perception, both using the terms interchangeably; but they seem to me to incline toward the view that the moral sense is an emotional faculty. (See Martineau, Types, Vol. II, Bk. II, pp. 524 ff., where their meaning of the word sense is defined.) Hume is clearer in his statements on this point, and more outspoken in his opposition to the rationalists. Butler and Martineau, on the other hand, regard conscience as a cognitive faculty, but not in the sense of the rationalists. With them it is a perception rather than a power of reason proclaiming general moral truths.