The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Mill’s Utilitarianism
• Textual Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Essays On Ethics, Religion and Society
• Remarks On Bentham’s Philosophy 1833
• Blakey’s History of Moral Science 1833
• Sedgwick’s Discourse 1835
• Bentham 1838
• Coleridge 1840
• Whewell On Moral Philosophy 1852
• Utilitarianism 1861
• Editor’s Note
• Chapter I: General Remarks
• Chapter II: What Utilitarianism Is
• Chapter III: Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility
• Chapter IV: Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Susceptible
• Chapter V: On the Connexion Between Justice and Utility
• Auguste Comte and Positivism 1865
• Editor’s Note
• Part I: The Cours De Philosophie Positive*
• Part II: The Later Speculations of M. Comte*
• Three Essays On Religion 1874
• Editor’s Note
• Introductory Notice
• Nature
• Utility of Religion
• Theism
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Preface to Dissertations and Discussions (1859)
• Appendix B: Obituary of Bentham (1832)
• Appendix C: Comment On Bentham In Bulwer’s England and the English (1833)
• Appendix D: Quotation From %u201ccoleridge%u201d In Mill’s System of Logic (8th Ed., 1872), 519-23 (vi, X, 5)
• Appendix E: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited In the Essays, With Variants and Notes

SEDGWICK’S DISCOURSE

1835

EDITOR’S NOTE

“Professor Sedgwick’s Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge,” D&D, I (2nd ed., 1867), 95-159, with footnote to title: “London Review, April 1835.” Reprinted from the London Review, I (Apr., 1835), 94-135, signed “A”. Original heading: “Art. V. Professor Sedgwick’s Discourse.—State of Philosophy in England. / A Discourse on the Studies of the University. By Adam Sedgwick, M.A., F.R.S.; Woodwardian Professor, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. [London: Parker,] 1834. 3d edit.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of Sedgwick’s ‘Discourse on the Studies of the University,’ headed ‘Professor Sedgwick’s Discourse—State of Philosophy in England’, in the first number of the London Review (April, 1835)” (MacMinn, 43). The article, which he had begun writing by 14 October, 1834, was finished, presumably in an unrevised state, by 26 November (see JSM’s letters to J. P. Nichol on those dates, Earlier Letters, XII, 235 and 238). See also the footnote to 45 below, which describes a passage as “Written in 1834.” For JSM’s attitude to this article, and its relation to others in this volume, see the Textual Introduction, cxvii-cxx above.

The following text is collated with that in D&D (1st ed.), and that in the London Review. In the footnoted variants, D&D (2nd ed.) is indicated by “67”; D&D (1st ed.) by “59”; the London Review by “35”. There are no corrections or alterations in the Somerville College copies of D&D and the London Review.

Sedgwick’s Discourse

if we were asked for what end, above all others, endowed universities exist, or ought to exist, we should answer—To keep alive philosophy. This, too, is the ground on which, of late years, our own national endowments have chiefly been defended. To educate common minds for the common business of life, a public provision may be useful, but is not indispensable: nor are there wanting arguments,^a not conclusive, yet of considerable strength, to show that it is undesirable. Whatever individual competition does at all, it commonly does best. All things in which the public are adequate judges of excellence, are best supplied where the stimulus of individual interest is the most active; and that is where pay is in proportion to exertion: not where pay is made sure in the first instance, and the only security for exertion is the superintendence of government; far less where, as in the English universities, even that security has been successfully excluded. But there is an education of which it cannot be pretended that the public are competent judges; the education by which great minds are formed. To rear up minds with aspirations and faculties above the herd,^b capable of leading on their countrymen to greater achievements in virtue, intelligence, and social well-being; to do this, and likewise so to educate the leisured classes of the community generally, that they may participate as far as possible in the qualities of these superior spirits, and be prepared to appreciate them, and follow in their steps—these are purposes, requiring institutions of education placed above dependence on the immediate pleasure of that very multitude whom they are designed to elevate. These are the ends for which endowed universities are desirable; they are those which all endowed universities profess to aim at; and great is their disgrace, if, having undertaken this task, and claiming credit for fulfilling it, they leave it unfulfilled.

In what manner are these purposes—the greatest which any human institution can propose to itself—purposes which the English Universities must be fit for, or they are fit for nothing—performed by those universities?—Circumspice.

In the intellectual pursuits which form great minds, this country was formerly pre-eminent. England once stood at the head of European philosophy. Where stands she now? Consult the general opinion of Europe. The celebrity of England, in the present day, rests upon her docks, her canals, her railroads. In intellect she is distinguished only for a kind of sober good sense, free from extravagance, but also void of lofty aspirations; and for doing all those things which are best done where man most resembles a machine, with the precision of a machine. Valuable qualities, doubtless; but not precisely those by which ^cmankind raise themselves^c to the perfection of ^dtheir^d nature, or ^eachieve^e greater and greater conquests over the difficulties which encumber ^ftheir^f social arrangements. Ask any reflecting person in France or Germany his opinion of England; whatever may be his own tenets—however friendly his disposition to us—whatever his admiration of our institutions, and ^gof some parts of our national character^g ; however alive to the faults and errors of his own countrymen, the feature which always strikes him in the English mind is the absence of enlarged and commanding views. Every question he finds discussed and decided on its own basis, however narrow, without any light thrown upon it from principles more extensive than itself; and no question discussed at all, unless parliament, or some constituted authority, is to be moved to-morrow or the day after to put it to the vote. Instead of the ardour of research, the eagerness for large and comprehensive inquiry, of the educated part of the French and German youth, what find we? Out of the narrow bounds of mathematical and physical science, not a vestige of a reading and thinking public engaged in the investigation of truth as truth, in the prosecution of thought for the sake of thought. Among ^hfew^h except sectarian religionists—and what they are we all know—is there any interest in the great problem of man’s nature and life: among ⁱstill fewerⁱ is there any curiosity respecting the nature and principles of human society, the history or the philosophy of civilization; nor any belief that, from such inquiries, a single important practical consequence can follow. Guizot, the greatest admirer of England among the Continental philosophers, nevertheless remarks that, in England, even great events do not, as they do everywhere else, inspire great ideas.^[*] Things, in England, are greater than the men who accomplish them.^j

But perhaps this degeneracy is the effect of some cause over which the universities had no control, and against which they have been ineffectually struggling. If so, those bodies are wonderfully patient of being baffled. Not a word of complaint escapes any of their leading dignitaries—not a hint that their highest endeavours are thwarted, their best labours thrown away; not a symptom of dissatisfaction with the intellectual state of the national mind, save when it discards the boroughmongers, lacks zeal for the Church, or calls for the admission of Dissenters within their precincts. On the contrary, perpetual boasting how perfectly they succeed in accomplishing all that they attempt; endless celebrations of the country’s glory and happiness in possessing a youth so taught, so mindful of what they are taught. When any one presumes to doubt whether the universities are all that universities should be, he is not told that they do their best, but that the tendencies of the age are too strong for them; no—he is, with an air of triumph, referred to their fruits, and asked whether an education which has made English gentlemen what we see them, can be other than a good education? All is right so long as no one speaks of taking away their endowments, or encroaching upon their monopoly.^* While they are thus eulogizing their own efforts, and the results of their efforts; philosophy—not any particular school of philosophy, but philosophy altogether—speculation of any comprehensive kind, and upon any deep or extensive subject—has been falling more and more into distastefulness and disrepute among the educated classes of England. Have those classes meanwhile learned to slight and despise these authorized teachers of philosophy, or ceased to frequent their schools? Far from it. The universities then may flourish, though the pursuits which are the end and justification of the existence of universities decay. The teacher thrives and is in honour, while that which he affects to teach vanishes from among mankind.

If the above reflections were to occur, as they well might, to an intelligent foreigner, deeply interested in the condition and prospects of English intellect, we may imagine with what avidity he would seize upon the publication before us. It is a discourse on the studies of Cambridge, by a Cambridge Professor, delivered to a Cambridge audience, and published at their request. It contains the opinion of one of the most liberal members of the University on the studies of the place; or, as we should rather say, on the studies which the place recommends, and which some few of its pupils actually prosecute. Mr. Sedgwick is not a mere pedant of a college, who defends the system because he has been formed by the system, and has never learned to see anything but in the light in which the system showed it to him. Though an intemperate^k , he is not a bigoted, partisan of the body to which he belongs; he can see faults as well as excellences, not merely in their mode of teaching, but in some parts of what they teach. His intellectual pretensions, too, are high. ^lNot^l of him can it be said that he aspires not to philosophy; he writes in the character of one to whom its loftiest eminences are familiar. Curiosity, therefore, cannot but be somewhat excited to know what he finds to say respecting the Cambridge scheme of education, and what notion may be formed of the place from the qualities he exhibits in himself, one of its^m favourable specimens.

Whatever be the value of Professor Sedgwick’s Discourse in the former of these two points of view, in the latter we have found it, on examination, to be a document of considerable importance. The Professor gives his opinion (for the benefit chiefly, he says, of the younger members of the University, but in a manner, he hopes, “not altogether unfitting to other ears”^[*] ) on the value of several great branches of intellectual culture, and on the spirit in which they should be pursued. Not satisfied with this, he proclaims in his preface another and a still more ambitious purpose—the destruction of what ⁿhas been termedⁿ the Utilitarian theory of morals. “He has attacked the utilitarian theory of morals, not merely because he thinks it founded on false reasoning, but because he also believes that it produces a degrading effect on the temper and conduct of those who adopt it.”^[†]

This is promising great things: to refute a theory of morals; and to trace its influence on the character and actions of those who embrace it. A better test of capacity for philosophy could not be desired. We shall see how Professor Sedgwick acquits himself of his two-fold task, and what were his qualifications for undertaking it.

From an author’s mode of introducing his subject, and laying the outlines of it before the reader, some estimate may generally be formed of his capacity for discussing it. In this respect, the indications afforded by Mr. Sedgwick’s commencement are not favourable. Before giving his opinion of the studies of the University, he had to tell us what those studies are. They are, first, mathematical and physical science; secondly, the classical languages and literature; thirdly (if some small matter of Locke and Paley deserve so grand a denomination), mental and moral science. For Mr. Sedgwick’s purpose, this simple mode of designating these studies would have been sufficiently precise; but if he was determined to hit off their metaphysical characteristics, it should not have been in the following style:—

How many errors in expression and classification in one short passage! The “study of the laws of nature” is spoken of as one thing, “the study of ourselves” as another. In studying ourselves, are we not studying the laws of our nature? “All parts of inductive philosophy” are placed under one head; “ethics and metaphysics, moral and political philosophy,” under another. Are these no part of inductive philosophy? Of what philosophy, then, are they a part? Is not all philosophy, which is founded upon experience and observation, inductive?^* What, again can Mr. Sedgwick mean by calling “ethics” one thing and “moral philosophy” another? Moral philosophy must be either ethics or a branch of metaphysics—either the knowledge of our duty, or the theory of the feelings with which we regard our duty. What a loose description, too, of ancient literature—where no description at all was required. The writings of the ancients are spoken of as if there were nothing in them but the biographies of eminent statesmen.

This want of power to express accurately what is conceived, almost unerringly denotes inaccuracy in the conception itself: such verbal criticism, therefore,^o is far from unimportant. But the topics of a graver kind, which Mr. Sedgwick’s Discourse suggests, are fully sufficient to occupy us, and to them we shall henceforth confine ourselves.

The Professor’s survey of the studies of the University commences with “the study of the laws of nature,” or, to speak a more correct language, the laws of the material universe. Here, to a mind stored with the results of comprehensive thought, there lay open a boundless field of remark, of the kind most useful to the young students of the University. At the stage in education which they are supposed to have reached, the time was come for disengaging their minds from the microscopic contemplation of the details of the various sciences, and elevating them to the idea of Science as a whole—to the idea of human culture as a whole—of the place which those various sciences occupy in the former, and the functions which they perform in the latter. Though an actual analysis would have been impossible, there was room to present, in a rapid sketch, the results of an analysis, of ^pthe methods^p of the various physical sciences—^q the processes by which they severally arrive at truth: the peculiar logic of each science, and the light thrown thereby upon universal logic: the various kinds and degrees of evidence upon which the truths of those sciences rest; how to estimate them; how to adapt our modes of investigation to them: how far the habits of estimating evidence, which these sciences engender, are applicable to other subjects, and to evidence of another kind; how far inapplicable. Hence the transition was easy to the more extensive inquiry, what these physical studies are capable of doing for the mind; which of the habits and powers that constitute a fine intellect those pursuits tend to cultivate; what are those which they do not cultivate those even (for such there are) which they tend to impede; by what other studies and intellectual exercises by what general reflections, or course of reading or meditation, those deficiencies may be supplied. The Professor might thus have shown (what it is usual only to declaim about) how highly a familiarity with mathematics, with dynamics, with even experimental physics and natural history, conduces both to^r strength and^s soundness of^t understanding; and yet how possible it is to be master of all these sciences, and to be unable to put two ideas together with a useful result, on any other topic. The youth of the university might have been taught to set a just value on these attainments, yet to see in them, as branches of general education, what they really are—the early stages in the formation of a ^usuperior^u mind; the^v instruments of a higher culture. Nor would it have been out of place in such a discourse, though perhaps not peculiarly appropriate to this part of it, to have added a few considerations on the tendency of scientific pursuits in general; the influence of habits of analysis and abstraction upon the character:—how, without those habits, the mind is the slave of its own accidental associations, the dupe of every superficial appearance, and fit only to receive its opinions from authority:—on the other hand, how their exclusive ^wcultivation^w , while it strengthens the associations which connect means with ends, effects with causes, tends to weaken many of those upon which our enjoyments and our social feelings depend; and by accustoming the mind to consider, in objects, chiefly the properties on account of which we refer them to classes and give them general names, leaves our conceptions of them as individuals, lame and meagre:—how, therefore, the corrective and antagonist principle to the pursuits which deal with objects only in the abstract, is to be sought in those which deal with them altogether in the concrete, clothed in properties and circumstances: real life in its most varied forms, poetry and art in all their branches.

These, and many kindred topics, a ^xtrue^x philosopher, standing in the place of Professor Sedgwick, would, as far as space permitted, have illustrated and insisted on. But the Professor’s resources supplied him only with a few trite commonplaces, on the high privilege of comprehending the mysteries of the natural world; the value of studies which give a habit of abstraction, and a “power of concentration;” the use of scientific pursuits in saving us from languor and vacuity; with other truths of ^ythat small calibre^y . To these he adds, that “the study of the higher sciences is well suited to keep down a spirit of arrogance and intellectual pride,” by convincing us of “the narrow limitation of our faculties;”^[*] and upon this peg he appends a dissertation on the evidences of design in the universe—a subject on which much originality was not to be hoped for, and the nature of which may be allowed to protect feebleness from any severity of comment.

The Professor’s next topic is the classical languages and literature. And here he begins by wondering. ^zIt is a common propensity of writers on natural theology^z to erect everything into a wonder. ^aThey^a cannot consider the^b greatness and wisdom of God, once for all, as proved, but ^cthink themselves^c bound to be finding fresh arguments for it in every chip or stone; and ^dthey think^d nothing a proof of greatness unless ^ethey^e can wonder at it; and to most minds a wonder explained is a wonder no longer. Hence a sort of vague feeling, as if, to ^ftheir^f conceptions, God would not be so great if he had made us capable of understanding more of the laws of his universe; and hence a reluctance to admit even the most obvious explanation, lest it should destroy the wonder.

The subject of Professor Sedgwick’s wonder is a very simple thing—the manner in which a child acquires a language.

^gIf^g whatever we do without understanding the machinery by which we do it, be done by a rational instinct, we learn to dance by instinct: since few of the dancing-master’s pupils have ever heard of any one of the muscles which his instructions and their own sedulous practice give them the power to use. Do we grow wheat by “a rational instinct,” because we know not how the seed germinates in the ground? We know by experience, not by instinct, that it ^hdoes germinate^h , and on that assurance we sow it. A child learns a language by the ordinary laws of association; by hearing the word spoken, on the various occasions on which the meaning denoted by it has to be conveyed. This mode of acquisition is better adapted for giving a loose and vague, than a precise, conception of the meaning of an abstract term; accordingly, most people’s conceptions of the meaning of many abstract terms in common use remain always loose and vague. The rapidity with which ⁱchildren learnⁱ a language is not more wonderful than the rapidity with which ^jthey learn^j so much else at an early age. It is a common remark, that we gain more knowledge in the first few years of life, without labour, than we ever ^kafterwards^k acquire by the hardest toil, in double the time. There are many causes to account for this; among which it is sufficient to specify, that ^lmuch of^l the knowledge we then acquire concerns our most pressing wants, and that our attention to outward impressions is not yet deadened by familiarity, nor distracted, as in grown persons, by a previously accumulated stock of inward ^mfeelings and ideas^m .

Against the general tendency of the Professor’s remarks on the cultivation of the ancient languages, ⁿthere is little to be saidⁿ . We think with him, that “our fathers have done well in making classical studies an early and prominent part of liberal education” (p. 36). We fully coincide in his opinion, that “the philosophical and ethical works of the ancients deserve a much larger portion of our time than we” (meaning Cambridge) “have hitherto bestowed on them” (p. 39). We commend the liberality (for, in a professor of an English University, the liberality which admits the smallest fault in the university system of tuition deserves to be accounted extraordinary) of the following remarks:—

The illustration which closes the above passage (though, as is often the case with illustrations, it does not illustrate) is rather pretty: a circumstance which we should be sorry not to notice, as, amid much straining, and many elaborate flights of imagination, we have not met with any other instance in which the Professor makes so near an approach to actual eloquence.

We have said that we go all lengths with our author in claiming for classical literature a place in education, at least equal to that commonly assigned to it. But though we think his opinion right, we think most of his reasons wrong. As, for example, the following:—

This dictum respecting Imagination and Reason is only not a truism, because it is, as Coleridge would say, a falsism. Does the Professor mean that ^oany “great^o work of imagination”—the Paradise Lost, for instance—could have been produced at an earlier age, or by a less matured or less accomplished mind, than the Mécanique Céleste?^[*] Does he mean that a learner can appreciate Æschylus or Sophocles before he is old enough to understand Euclid or Lacroix? In nations, again, the assertion, that imagination, in any but the vulgarest sense of the word, attains maturity sooner than reason, is so far from being ^pcorrect^p , that throughout all history the two have invariably flourished together; have, and necessarily must. Does Mr. Sedgwick think that any great work of imagination ever was, or can be, produced, without great powers of reason? Be the country Greece or Rome, Italy, France, or England, the age of her greatest eminence in poetry and the fine arts has^q been that of her greatest statesmen, generals, orators, historians, navigators—in one word, thinkers, in every department of active life; not, indeed, of her greatest philosophers, but only because Philosophy is the tardiest product of Reason itself.^*

^rOf the true reasons, and there are most substantial and cogent ones, for assigning to classical studies a high place in general education^r , we find not a word in Mr. Sedgwick’s tract; but, instead of them, much harping on the value of the writings of antiquity as “patterns” and “models.” This is lauding the abuse of classical knowledge as the use; and is a very bad lesson to ^sthe “younger^s members” of the University. The study of the ancient writers has been of unspeakable benefit to the moderns; from which benefit, the attempts at direct imitation of those writers have been no trifling drawback. The necessary effect of imitating “models” is, to set manner above matter. The imitation of the classics has perverted the whole taste of modern Europe on the subject of composition: it has made style a subject of cultivation and of praise, independently of ideas; whereas, by the ancients, style was never thought of but in complete subordination to matter. The ancients ^t(in the good times of their literature)^t would as soon have thought of a coat in the abstract, as of style in the abstract: the merit of a style, in their eyes, was, that it exactly fitted the thought. Their first aim was, by the assiduous study of their subject, to secure to themselves thoughts worth expressing; their next was, to find words which would convey those thoughts with the utmost degree of nicety; and only when this was made sure, did they think of ornament. Their style, therefore, whether ornamented or plain, grows out of their turn of thought; and may be admired, but cannot be imitated, by any one whose turn of thought is different. The instruction which Professor Sedgwick should have given to his pupils, was to follow no models; to attempt no style, but let their thoughts shape out the style best suited to them; to resemble the ancients, not by copying their manner, but by understanding their own subject as well, cultivating their faculties as highly, and taking as much trouble with their work, as the ancients did. All imitation of an author’s style, except that which arises from making his thoughts ^uour^u own, is mere affectation and vicious mannerism.

In discussing the value of the ancient languages, Mr. Sedgwick touches upon the importance of ancient history. On this topic, on which so much, and of the most interesting kind, might have been said, he delivers nothing but questionable commonplaces. “History,” says he, “is, to our knowledge of man in his social capacity, what physical experiments are to our knowledge of the laws of nature” (p. 42). Common as this notion is, it is a strange one to be held by a professor of physical science; for assuredly no person is satisfied with such evidence in studying the laws of the natural world, as history affords with respect to the laws of political society. The evidence of history, instead of being analogous to that of experiment, leaves the philosophy of society in exactly the state in which physical science was, before the method of experiment was introduced. The Professor should reflect, that we cannot make experiments in history. We are obliged, therefore, as the ancients did in physics, to content ourselves with such experiments as we find made to our hands; and these are so few, and so complicated, that little or nothing can be inferred from them.^v There is not a fact in history which is not susceptible of as many different explanations as there are possible theories of human affairs.^w Not only is history not the ^xsource^x of political philosophy, but the profoundest political philosophy is requisite to explain history; without it all in history which is worth understanding remains mysterious. Can Mr. Sedgwick^y explain why the Greeks, in their brief career, so far surpassed their ^zcotemporaries^z , or why the Romans conquered the world? ^aMr. Sedgwick mistakes the functions of history in political speculation. History is not the foundation, but the verification, of the social science; it corroborates, and often suggests, political truths, but cannot prove them. The proof of them is drawn from the laws of human nature; ascertained^a through the study of ourselves by reflection, and of mankind by actual intercourse with them. That what we know of former ages, like what we know of foreign nations, is, with all its ^bimperfections^b , of much use, by correcting the narrowness incident to personal experience, ^cis undeniable^c ; but the usefulness of history depends upon its being kept in the second place.

The Professor ^dseems^d wholly unaware of the importance of accuracy, either in thought or in expression. “In ancient history,” says he (p. 42), “we can trace the fortunes of mankind under almost every condition of political and social life.” So far is this from being true, that ancient history does not so much as furnish an example of a civilized people in which the bulk of the inhabitants were not slaves. Again, “all the successive actions we contemplate are at such a distance from us, that we can see their true bearings on each other undistorted by that mist of prejudice with which every modern political question is surrounded.” We appeal to all who are conversant with the modern writings on ancient history, whether even this is true. The most elaborate Grecian history which we possess^* is impregnated with the anti-Jacobin spirit in every line; and the Quarterly Review^e laboured as diligently for many years to vilify the Athenian republic as the American.

Thus far, the faults which we have discovered in Mr. Sedgwick are^f of omission rather than of commission: or at worst, amount only to this, that he has ^gcontented himself with repeating^g the trivialities he found current^h . Had there been nothing ⁱbut thisⁱ to be said of the remainder of the Discourse, we should not have disturbed its peaceful progress to oblivion.

We have now, however, arrived at the opening of that part of Professor Sedgwick’s Discourse which is most laboured, and for the sake of which all the rest may be surmised to have been written,—his strictures on Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding, and Paley’s Principles of Moral Philosophy. These works comprise what little of ethical and metaphysical instruction is given, or professed to be given, at Cambridge. The remainder of Mr. Sedgwick’s Discourse is devoted to an attack upon them.

We assuredly have no thought of defending either work as a text-book, still less as the sole text-book, on their respective subjects, in any school of philosophy. Of Paley’s work, though it possesses in a high degree some minor merits, we think, on the whole, meanly. Of Locke’s Essay, the beginning and foundation of the modern analytical psychology, we cannot speak but with the deepest reverence; whether we consider the era which it constitutes in philosophy, the intrinsic value, even at the present day, of its thoughts, or the noble devotion to truth, the beautiful and touching earnestness and simplicity, which he not only manifests in himself, but has the power beyond almost all other philosophical writers of infusing into his reader. His Essay should be familiar to every student. But no work, a hundred and fifty years old, can be fit to be the sole, or even the principal work for the instruction of youth in a science like that of Mind. In metaphysics, every new truth sets aside or modifies much of what was previously received as truth.^j Berkeley’s refutation of the doctrine of abstract ideas would of itself necessitate a complete revision of the phraseology of the most valuable parts of Locke’s book. And the important speculations originated by Hume and ^kimproved^k by Brown, concerning the nature of our experience, are acknowledged, even by the philosophers who do not adopt in their full extent the conclusions of those writers, to have carried^l the analysis of our knowledge and of the process of acquiring it, so much beyond the point where Locke left it, as to require that his work should be entirely recast.

Moreover, the book which has changed the face of a science, even when not superseded in its doctrines, is seldom suitable for didactic purposes. It is adapted to the state of mind, not of those who are ignorant of every doctrine, but of those who are instructed in an erroneous doctrine. So far as it is taken up ^mwith^m directly combating the errors which prevailed before it was written, the more completely it has done its work, the more certain it is of becoming superfluous, not to say unintelligible, without a commentary. And even its positive truths are defended against such objections only as were current in its own times, and guarded only against such misunderstandings as the people of those times were likely to fall into. Questions of morals and metaphysics differ from physical questions in this, that their aspect changes with every change ⁿinⁿ the human mind. At no two periods is the same question embarrassed by the same difficulties, or the same truth in need of the same explanatory comment. The fallacy which is satisfactorily refuted in one age, re-appears in another, in a shape which the arguments formerly used do not precisely meet; and seems to triumph, until some one, with weapons suitable to the altered form of the error, arises and repeats its overthrow.

These remarks are peculiarly applicable to Locke’s Essay. His doctrines were new, and had to make their way: he therefore wrote not for learners, but for the learned; for ^omen^o who were trained in the systems ^pantecedent^p to his—^qin those^q of the Schoolmen or of the Cartesians. He said what he thought necessary to establish his own opinions, and^r answered the objections of such objectors as the age afforded; but he could not anticipate all the objections which might be made by a subsequent age: least of all could he anticipate those which would be made now, when his philosophy has long been the prevalent one; when the arguments of objectors have been rendered as far as possible consistent with his principles, and are often such as could not have been thought of until he had cleared the ground by demolishing some received opinion, which no one before him had thought of disputing.^*

To attack Locke, therefore, because other arguments than it was necessary for him to use have become requisite to the support of some of his conclusions, is like reproaching the Evangelists because they did not write Evidences of Christianity. The question is, not what Locke has said, but what would he have said if he had heard all that has since been said against him? ^sUnreasonable^s , however, as is a criticism on Locke conceived in this spirit, Mr. Sedgwick indulges in another strain of criticism even more ^tunreasonable^t .

The “greatest fault,” he says, of Locke’s Essay, “is the contracted view it takes of the capacities of man—allowing him, indeed, the faculty of reflecting, and following out trains of thought according to the rules of abstract reasoning; but depriving him both of his powers of imagination and of his moral sense” (p. 57). Several pages are thereupon employed in celebrating “the imaginative powers.” And a metaphysician who “discards these powers from his system” (which, according to Mr. Sedgwick, Locke does), is accused of “shutting his eyes to the loftiest qualities of the soul” (p. 49).

Has the Professor so far forgotten the book which he must have read once, and on which he passes judgment with so much authority, as to fancy that it claims to be a treatise on all “the capacities of man?” ^uCan he^u write in the manner we have just quoted about Locke’s book, with the fact looking him in the face from his own pages, that it is entitled An Essay on the Human Understanding? Who besides Mr. Sedgwick would look for a treatise on the imagination under such a title? What place, what concern could it have had there?

The one object of Locke’s speculations was to ascertain the limits of our knowledge; what questions we may hope to solve, what are beyond our reach. This purpose is ^vannounced^v in the Preface, and manifested in every chapter of the book. He ^wdeclares^w that he commenced his inquiries because “in discoursing on a subject very remote from this,” it came into his thoughts that “before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with.”^* The following, from the first chapter of the first book, are a few of the passages in which he describes the scope of his speculations:—

“To inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent.” “To consider the discerning faculties of man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with.” “To give an account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we have,” and “set down” some “measures of the certainty of our knowledge, or the grounds of those persuasions which are to be found amongst men.” “To search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge, and to examine by what measures, in things whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our persuasions.” And “by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding,” to “discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us;” and thereby to “prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension, to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether, and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities.”^[*]

^x And because a philosopher, having placed before himself an undertaking of this magnitude, and of this strictly scientific character, and having his mind full of thoughts which were destined to effect a revolution in the philosophy of the human intellect, does not quit his subject to panegyrize the imagination, he is accused of saying that there is no such thing; or of saying that it is a pernicious thing; or rather (for to this pitch of ingenuity Mr. Sedgwick’s criticism reaches) of saying ^yboth^y that there is no such thing, and ^zalso^z that it is a pernicious thing. He “deprives man of his powers of imagination;” he “discards these powers from his system;” and at the same time he “speaks of those powers only to condemn them;” he “denounces the exercise of the imagination as a fraud upon the reason.”^[†] As well might it be asserted, that Locke denies that man has a body, or condemns the exercise of the body, because he is not constantly proclaiming what a beautiful and glorious thing the body is. Mr. Sedgwick cannot conceive the state of mind of such a man as Locke, who is too entirely absorbed in his subject to be able to turn aside from it every time that an opportunity offers for a flight of rhetoric. With the imagination in its own province, as a source of enjoyment, and a means of educating the feelings, Locke had nothing to do; nor was the subject suited to the character of his mind. He was concerned with imagination, only in the province of pure intellect; and all he had to do with it there, was to warn it off the ground. This Mr. Sedgwick calls “denouncing the exercise of the imagination as a fraud upon the reason,” and “regarding men who appeal to the powers of imagination in their proofs and mingle them in their exhortations as no better than downright cheats” (p. 50). Locke certainly says that imagination is not proof. Does the Professor then mean—and by his rhapsody about the imagination does he intend us to understand—that imagination is proof? But how can we expect clearness of ideas on metaphysical subjects, from a writer who cannot discriminate between the Understanding and the Will? Locke’s Essay is on the Understanding; Mr. Sedgwick tells us, ^awith^a much finery ^bof language^b , that the imagination is a powerful engine for acting on the will. So is a cat-o’-nine-tails. Is a cat-o’-nine-tails, therefore, one of the sources of human knowledge? “In trying circumstances,” says the Professor, “the determination of the will is often more by feeling than by reason” (p. 51). In all circumstances, trying or otherwise, the determination of the will is wholly by feeling. Reason is not an end in itself: it teaches us to know the right ends, and the way to them; but if we desire those ends, this desire is not Reason, but a feeling. Hence the importance of the question, how to give to the imagination that direction which will exercise the most beneficial influence upon the feelings. But the Professor probably meant that “in trying circumstances, the determination” not “of the will,” but of the understanding, “is often more by feeling than by reason.” Unhappily it is; this is the tendency in human nature, against which Locke warns his readers; and by so warning them, incurs the censure of Mr. Sedgwick.^*

The other accusation which the Professor urges against Locke—that of overlooking “the faculties of moral judgment,” and “depriving” man of his “moral sense”^[*] —will best be considered along with his strictures on Paley’s Moral Philosophy; for against Paley, also, the principal charge is that he denies the moral sense.

It is a fact in human nature, that we have moral judgments and moral feelings. We judge certain actions and dispositions to be right, others wrong: this we call approving and disapproving them. We have also feelings of pleasure in the contemplation of the former class of actions and dispositions—feelings of dislike and aversion to the latter; which feelings, as everybody must be conscious, do not exactly resemble any other of our feelings of pain or pleasure.

Such are the phenomena. Concerning their reality there is no dispute. But there are two theories respecting the origin of these phenomena, which have divided philosophers from the earliest ages of philosophy. One is, that the distinction between right and wrong is an ultimate and inexplicable fact; that we perceive this distinction, as we perceive the distinction of colours, by a peculiar faculty; and that the pleasures and pains, the desires and aversions, consequent upon this perception, are all ultimate facts in our nature; as much so as the pleasures and pains, or the desires and aversions, of which sweet or bitter tastes, pleasing or grating sounds, are the object. This is called the theory of the moral sense—or of moral instincts—or of eternal and immutable morality—or of intuitive principles of morality—or by many other names; to the differences between which, those who adopt the theory often attach great importance, but which, for our present purpose, may all be considered as ^cequivalent^c .

The other theory is, that the ideas of right and wrong, and the feelings which attach themselves to those ideas, are not ultimate facts, but may be explained and accounted for; are not the result of any peculiar law of our nature, but of the same laws on which all our other complex ideas and feelings depend: that the distinction between moral and immoral acts is not a peculiar and inscrutable property in the acts themselves, which we perceive by a sense, as we perceive colours by our sense of sight; but flows from the ordinary properties of those actions, for the recognition of which we need no other faculty than our intellects and our bodily senses. And the particular property in actions, which constitutes them moral or immoral, in the opinion of those who hold this theory (all of them, at least, who need ^dhere^d be noticed), is the influence of those actions, and of the dispositions from which they emanate, upon human happiness.

This theory is sometimes called the theory of Utility; and is what Mr. Sedgwick means by “the utilitarian theory of morals.”^[*]

Maintaining this second theory, Mr. Sedgwick calls “denying the existence of moral feelings” (p. 32). This is, in the first place, misstating the question. Nobody denies the existence of moral feelings. The feelings exist, manifestly exist, and^e cannot be denied. The questions on which there is a difference are—first, whether they are simple or complex feelings, and if complex, of what elementary feelings they are ^fcomposed:^f which is a question of metaphysics; and secondly, what kind of acts and dispositions are the proper objects of those ^gfeelings;^g in other words, what is the principle of ^hmorals.^h These questions, and more peculiarly the last, the theory which ⁱhas been termed utilitarianⁱ professes to solve.

Paley adopted this theory. Mr. Sedgwick, who professes the other theory, treats Paley, and all who take Paley’s side of the question, with extreme contumely.

We shall show that Mr. Sedgwick has no right to represent Paley as a type of the theory of utility; that he has failed in refuting even Paley; and that the tone of ^jhigh moral reprobation^j which he has ^kassumed^k towards all who adopt that theory is altogether unmerited on their part, and on his, from his extreme ignorance of the subject, peculiarly unbecoming.

Those who maintain that human happiness is the end and test of morality are bound to prove that the principle is true; but not that Paley understood it. ^lNo one is^l entitled to found an argument against a principle, upon the faults or blunders of a particular writer who professed to build his system upon it, without taking notice that the principle may be understood differently, and has in fact been understood differently by other ^mwriters.^m What would be thought of an assailant of Christianity, who should judge of its truth or beneficial tendency from the ⁿviewⁿ taken of it by the Jesuits, or by the Shakers? A doctrine is not judged at all until it is judged in its ^obest^o form. The principle of utility may be viewed in as many different lights as every other rule or principle may. If it be liable to mischievous misinterpretations, this is true of all very general, and therefore of all first, principles. Whether the ethical creed of a follower of utility will lead him to moral or immoral consequences, depends on what he thinks useful;—just as, with a partizan of the opposite doctrine—that of ^pinnate^p conscience—it depends on what he thinks his conscience enjoins. But either the one theory or the other must be true. Instead, therefore, of cavilling about the abuses and perversions of either, real manliness would consist in accepting the true, with all its liabilities to abuse and perversion; and then bending the whole force of our intellects to the establishment of such secondary and intermediate maxims, as may be guides to the bonâ fide inquirer in the application of the principle, and salutary checks to the sophist and the dishonest casuist.

There are faults in Paley’s conception of the philosophy of morals, both in its foundations and its subsequent stages, which prevent his book from being an example of the conclusions justly deducible from the doctrine of utility, or of the influences of that doctrine, when properly understood, upon the intellect and character.

In the first place, he does not consider utility as itself the source of moral obligation, but as a mere index to the will of God, which he regards as the ultimate groundwork of all morality, and the origin of its binding force. This doctrine (not that utility is an index to the will of God, but that it is an index and nothing else) we consider as highly exceptionable; and having really many of those bad effects on the mind, erroneously ascribed to the principle of utility.

The only view of the connexion between religion and morality which does not annihilate the very idea of the latter, is that which considers the Deity as not ^qmaking, but recognising and sanctioning^q , moral obligation. In the minds of most English ^rthinkers^r down to the middle of the last century, the idea of duty, and that of obedience to God, were so indissolubly united, as to be inseparable even in thought: and when we consider how in those days religious motives and ideas stood in the front of all speculations, it is not wonderful that religion should have been thought to constitute the ^sessence^s of all obligations to which it annexed its ^tsanction^t . To have inquired, Why am I bound to obey God’s will? would, to a Christian of that age, have appeared irreverent. It is a question, however, which, as much as any other, requires an answer from a Christian philosopher. “Because he is my Maker” is no answer. Why should I obey my Maker? From gratitude? Then gratitude is in itself obligatory, independently of my Maker’s will. From reverence and love? But why is he a proper object of love and reverence? Not because he is my Maker. If I had been made by an evil spirit, for evil purposes, my love and reverence (supposing me to be capable of such feelings) would have been due, not to the evil, but to the good Being. Is it because he is just, righteous, merciful? Then these attributes are in themselves good, independently of his pleasure. If any person has the misfortune to believe that his Creator commands wickedness, more respect is due to him for disobeying such imaginary commands, than for obeying them. If virtue would not be virtue unless the Creator^u commanded it—if it derive all its obligatory force from his will—there remains no ground for obeying him except his power; no motive for morality except the selfish one of the hope of heaven, or the selfish and slavish one of the fear of hell.

Accordingly, in strict consistency with this view of the nature of morality, Paley not only represents the proposition that we ought to do good and not harm to mankind, as a mere corollary from the proposition that God wills their good, and not their harm—but represents the motive to virtue, and the motive which constitutes it virtue, as consisting solely in the hope of heaven and the fear of hell.

It does not, however, follow that Paley believed mankind to have no feelings except selfish ones. He doubtless would have admitted that they are acted upon by other motives, or, in the language of Bentham and Helvetius, that they have other interests, than merely self-regarding ones. But he chose to say that actions done from those other motives are not virtuous. The happiness of mankind, according to him, was the end for which morality was enjoined; yet he would not admit anything to be morality, when the happiness of mankind, or of any of mankind except ourselves, is the inducement of it. He annexed an arbitrary meaning to the word virtue. How he came to think this arbitrary meaning the right one may be a question. ^vPartly, perhaps,^v by the habit of thinking and talking of morality under the metaphor of a law. In the notion of a law, the idea of the command of a superior, enforced by penalties, is of course the main element.

If Paley’s ethical system is thus unsound in its foundations, the spirit which runs through the details is no less exceptionable. It is, indeed, such as to prove, that neither the character nor the objects of the writer were those of a philosopher. There is none of the single-minded earnestness for truth, whatever it may be—the intrepid defiance of prejudice, the firm resolve to look all consequences in the face, which the word philosopher supposes, and without which nothing worthy of note was ever accomplished in moral or political philosophy. One sees throughout that he has a particular set of conclusions to come to, and will not, perhaps cannot, allow himself to let in any premises which would interfere with them. His book^w is one of a class which has since become very numerous, and is likely to become still more so—an apology for commonplace. Not to lay a solid foundation, and erect an edifice over it suited to the professed ends, but to construct pillars, and insert them ^xunder^x the existing structure, was Paley’s object. He took the doctrines of practical morals which he found current. Mankind were, about that time, ceasing to consider mere use and wont, or even the ordinary special pleading from texts of scripture, as sufficient warrants for ^ythose^y common opinions, and were demanding something like a philosophic basis for them. This philosophic basis, Paley, consciously or unconsciously, made it his endeavour to supply. The skill with which his book was adapted to satisfy this want of the time, accounts for the popularity which attended it, notwithstanding the absence of that generous and inspiring tone, which gives so much of their usefulness as well as of their charm to the writings of Plato, and Locke, and Fenelon, and which mankind are accustomed to pretend to admire, whether they really respond to it or not.

When an author starts with such an object, it is of little consequence what^z premises he sets out from. In adopting the principle of utility, Paley, ^athere is^a no doubt, followed the convictions of his ^bintellect^b ; but if he had started from any other principle, we have as little doubt that he would have arrived at the very same conclusions. These conclusions, namely, the received maxims of his time, were (it would have been strange if they were not) accordant in many^c points with those which philosophy would have dictated. But had they been accordant on all points, that was not the way in which a philosopher would have dealt with them.

The only deviation from commonplace which has^d been made an accusation (for all departures from commonplace are made accusations) against Paley’s moral system, is that of too readily allowing exceptions to important rules; and this Mr. Sedgwick does not fail to lay hold of, and endeavour, as others have done before him, to fix ^eit^e upon the principle of utility as ^fan immoral consequence^f . It is, however, imputable to the very same cause which we have already pointed out. Along with the prevailing maxims, Paley borrowed the prevailing laxity in their application. He had not only to maintain existing doctrines, but to save the credit of existing practices also. He found in his country’s morality (especially^g its political morality), modes of conduct universally prevalent, and applauded by all persons of station and consideration, but which, being acknowledged violations of great ^hmoral principles^h , could only be defended as cases of exception, resting on special grounds of expediency; and the only expediency which it was possible to ascribe to them was political expediency—that is, conduciveness to the ⁱinterestⁱ of the ^jruling powers^j . To this, and not to the tendencies of the principle of utility, is to be ascribed the lax morality taught by Paley, and justly objected to by Mr. Sedgwick, on the subject of lies, of ^ksubscription^k to articles, of the abuses of influence in the British constitution, and various other topics. The principle of utility leads to no such conclusions. Let us be permitted to add that, if it did, we should not of late years have heard so much in reprobation of it from all manner of persons, and from none more than from the sworn defenders of those very malpractices.

When an inquirer knows beforehand the conclusions which he is to come to, he is not likely to seek far for grounds to rest them upon. Accordingly, the considerations of expediency upon which Paley founds his moral rules, are almost all of the most obvious and vulgar kind. In estimating the consequences of actions, in order to obtain a measure of their morality, there are always two sets of considerations involved: the consequences to the outward interests of the parties concerned (including the agent himself); and the consequences to the characters of the same persons, and to their outward interests so far as dependent on their characters. In the estimation of the first of these two classes of considerations, there is in general not much difficulty, nor much room for difference of opinion. The actions which are directly hurtful, or directly useful, to the outward interests of oneself or of other people, are easily distinguished, sufficiently at least for the guidance of a private individual. The rights of individuals, which other individuals ought to respect, over external things, are ^lin general^l sufficiently pointed out by a few plain rules, and by the laws of one’s country. But it often happens that an essential part of the morality or immorality of an action or a rule of action consists in its influence upon the agent’s own mind: upon his susceptibilities of pleasure or pain, upon the general direction of his thoughts, feelings, and imagination, or upon some particular association. Many actions, moreover, produce effects upon the character of other persons besides the agent. In all these cases there will naturally be as much difference in the moral judgments of different persons, as there is in their views of human nature, and of the formation of character. Clear and comprehensive views of education and human culture must therefore precede, and form the basis of, a philosophy of morals; nor can the latter subject ever be understood, but in proportion as the former is so. For this, much yet remains to be done. Even the materials, though abundant, are not complete. Of those which exist, a large proportion have never yet found their way into the writings of philosophers; but are to be gathered, on the one hand, from actual observers of mankind; on the other, from those autobiographers, and from those poets or novelists, who have spoken out unreservedly, from their own experience, any true human feeling. To collect together these materials, and to add to them, will be a labour for successive generations. But Paley, instead of having brought from the philosophy of education and character any new light to illuminate the subject of morals, has not even availed himself of the lights which had already been thrown upon it from that source. He, in fact, had meditated little on this branch of the subject, and had no ideas in relation to it, but the commonest and most superficial.^m

Thus much we have been induced to say, rather from the importance of the subject, than for the sake of a just estimate of Paley, which is a matter of inferior consequence; still less for the ⁿsake of repelling Mr. Sedgwick’s onslaught, whichⁿ , as we shall soon see, might have been more summarily disposed of.

Mr. Sedgwick’s objections to the principle of utility are of two kinds—first, that it is not true; secondly, that it is dangerous, degrading, and so forth. What he says against its truth, when picked out from a hundred different places, and brought together, would fill about three pages, leaving about twenty consisting of attacks upon its tendency. This already looks^o ill; for, after all, the truth or falsehood of the principle is the main point. When, of a dissertation on any controverted question, a small part only is employed in proving the author’s own opinion, a large part in ascribing odious consequences to the opposite opinion, we are apt to think ^peither^p that, on the former point, there was not very much to be said^q; or, if there was, that the author is not very well qualified to say it^q . One thing is certain; that if an opinion have ever such mischievous consequences, that cannot prevent any thinking person from believing it, if the evidence is in its favour. Unthinking persons, indeed, if they are very solemnly assured that an opinion has mischievous consequences, may be frightened from examining the evidence. When, therefore, we find that this mode of dealing with an opinion is the favourite one—is resorted to in preference to the other, and with greater vehemence, and at greater length—we conclude that it is upon unthinking rather than upon thinking persons that the author calculates upon making an impression; or else, that he himself is one of the former class of persons—that his own judgment is determined, less by evidence presented to his understanding, than by the repugnancy of the opposite opinion to his partialities and affections; and that, perceiving clearly the opinion to be one which it would be painful to him to adopt, he has been easily satisfied with reasons for rejecting it.

All that the Professor says to disprove the principle of utility, and to prove the existence of a moral sense, is found in the following paragraph:—

The substance of the last three sentences is repeated at somewhat greater length shortly after (pp. 54-5), in a passage from which we ^rneed^r only quote the following words:—“No training (however greatly it may change an individual mind) can create a new faculty, any more than it can give a new organ of sense.” In many other parts of the Discourse, the same arguments are alluded to, but no new ones are introduced.

Let us, then, examine these arguments.

First, the Professor says, or seems to say, that our moral sentiments cannot be generated by experience of consequences, because a child feels the sense of shame before he has any experience of consequences; and likewise because millions of persons grow up, have moral feelings, and live morally, “who never traced, or thought of tracing, the consequences of their actions,” but who yet, it seems, are suffered to go at large, which we thought was not usually the case with persons who never think of the consequences of their actions. The Professor continues—“who never traced, or thought of tracing, the consequences of their actions, nor ever referred them to any standard of utility.”

Secondly;^s that our moral feelings cannot arise from teaching, because those feelings are often strongest in very early life.

Thirdly; that our moral feelings cannot arise from teaching, because teaching can only call forth a faculty, but cannot create one.

Let us first consider the singular allegation, that the sense of shame in a child precedes all experience of the consequences of actions. Is it not astounding that such an assertion should be ventured upon by any person of sane mind? At what period in a child’s life, after it is capable of forming the idea of an action at all, can it be without experience of the consequences of actions? As soon as it has the idea of one person striking another, is it not aware that striking produces pain? As soon as it has the idea of being commanded by its parent, has it not the notion that, by not doing what is commanded, it will excite the parent’s displeasure?^t A child’s knowledge of the simple fact (one of the earliest he becomes acquainted with), that some acts produce pain and others pleasure, is called by pompous names, “seeing and tracing the consequences of crime,” “trains of thought,” “referring actions to a standard,” terms which imply continued reflection and large abstractions; and because these terms are absurd when used of a child or an uneducated person, we are to conclude that a child or an uneducated person has no notion that one thing is caused by another. As well might it be said that a child requires an instinct to tell him that he has ten fingers, because he knows it before he has ever thought of “^ucarrying on^u arithmetical computations.”^[*] Though a child is not a jurist or a moral philosopher (to whom alone the Professor’s phrases would be properly applicable), he has the idea of himself hurting or offending some one, or of some one hurting or annoying him. These are ideas which precede any sense of shame in doing wrong; and it is out of these elements, and not out of abstractions, that the supporters of the theory of utility contend that the idea of wrong, and our feelings of disapprobation ^vof^v it, are originally formed. Mr. Sedgwick’s argument resembles one we often hear, that the principle of utility must be false, because it supposes morality to be founded on the good of society, an idea too complex for the majority of mankind, who look only to the particular persons concerned. Why, none but those who mingle in public transactions, or whose example is likely to have extensive influence, have any occasion to look beyond the particular persons concerned. Morality, for all other people, consists in doing good and refraining from harm, to themselves and to those who immediately surround them. As soon as a child has the idea of voluntarily producing pleasure or pain to any one person, he has an accurate notion of utility. When he afterwards gradually rises to the very complex idea of “society,” and learns in what manner his actions may affect the interests of other persons than those who are present to his sight, his conceptions of utility, and of right and wrong founded on utility, undergo a corresponding enlargement, but receive no new element.

Again, if it were ever to true that the sense of shame in a child precedes all knowledge of consequences, what is that to the question respecting a moral sense? ^wIs the sense of shame the same thing^w with a moral sense? A child is ashamed of doing what he is told is wrong; but so is he also ashamed of doing what he knows is right, if he expects to be laughed at for doing it; he is ashamed of being duller than another child, of being ugly, of being poor, of not having fine clothes, of not being able to run, or wrestle, or box so well as another. He is ashamed of whatever causes him to be thought less of by the persons who surround him. This feeling of shame is accounted for by obvious associations; but suppose it to be innate, what would that prove in favour of a moral sense? If all that Mr. Sedgwick can show for a moral sense is the sense of shame, ^xit might well be supposed^x that all our moral sentiments are the result of opinions which come to us from without; since the sense of shame so obviously follows the opinion of others, and, at least in^y early years, is wholly determined by it.

On the Professor’s first argument no more needs ^zhere^z be said. His second is the following: that moral feelings cannot “come of mere teaching,” because they do not grow up gradually, but are often strongest in very early life.

Now, this is, in the first place, a mistaking of the matter in dispute. ^aThe Professor is not arguing with Mandeville, or with the rhetoricians in Plato.^a Nobody^b, with whom he is concerned,^b says that moral feelings “come of mere teaching.” It is not pretended that they are factitious and artificial associations, inculcated by parents and teachers purposely to further certain social ends, and no more congenial to our natural feelings than the contrary associations. The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful; the idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable. From this ^cfact^c in our natural constitution,^d all our affections both of love and aversion towards human beings, in so far as they are different from those we^e entertain towards mere inanimate objects which are pleasant or disagreeable to us^f, are held, by the best teachers of the theory of utility, to originate^f . In this, the unselfish part of our nature, lies a foundation, even independently of inculcation from without, for the generation of moral feelings.

But if, because it is not inconsistent with the constitution of our nature that moral feelings should grow up independently of teaching, Mr. Sedgwick would infer that they generally do so, or that teaching is not the source of almost all the moral feeling which exists in the world, his assertion is a piece of sentimentality completely at variance with the facts. If by saying that “moral feelings are often strongest in very early life,” Mr. Sedgwick means that they are strongest in children, he only proves his^g ignorance of children. Young children have affections, but ^hnot^h moral feelings; and children whose will is never resisted, never acquire them. There is no selfishness equal to ⁱthatⁱ of children, as every one who is acquainted with children well knows. It is not^j the hard, cold selfishness of a grown person, for the most affectionate children have it^k, where their affection is not supplying a counter-impulse^k ; but the most selfish of grown persons does not come up to a child in the reckless seizing of any pleasure to himself, regardless of the consequences to others. The pains of others, though naturally painful to us, are not so until we have realized them by an act of imagination, implying voluntary attention; and that no ^lvery young^l child ever pays, while under the impulse of a present desire. If a child restrains the indulgence of any wish, it is either from affection or sympathy, which are quite other feelings than those of morality; or else (whatever Mr. Sedgwick may think) because he has been ^mtaught^m to do so. And he only learns the habit gradually, and in proportion to the assiduity and skill of the teaching.

The assertion that “moral feelings are often strongest in very early life,” is true in no sense but one which confirms what it is brought to refute. The time of life at which moral feelings are apt to be strongest, is the age when we cease to be merely members of our own families, and begin to have intercourse with the world; that is, when the teaching has continued longest in one direction, and has not commenced in any other direction. When we go forth into the world, and meet with teaching, both by precept and example, of an opposite tendency to that which we have been used to, the feeling begins to weaken. Is this a sign of its being wholly independent of teaching? Has a boy quietly educated in ⁿa well-regulated homeⁿ , or one who has been at a public school, the strongest moral feelings?

^oEnough has probably been said^o on the Professor’s second argument. ^pHis third^p is, that teaching may strengthen our natural faculties, and call forth those which are powerless because untried; but cannot create a faculty which does not exist; cannot, therefore, have created the moral faculty.

It is surprising that Mr. Sedgwick should not see that his argument begs the question in dispute. To prove that our moral judgments are innate, he assumes that they proceed from a distinct faculty. But this is precisely what the adherents of the principle of utility deny. They contend that the morality of actions is perceived by the same faculties by which we perceive any other of the qualities of actions, namely, our intellects and our senses. They ^qhold^q the capacity of perceiving moral distinctions ^rto be^r no more a ^sdistinct^s faculty than the capacity of trying causes, or of making a speech to a jury. This last is a very peculiar power, yet no one says that it must have preexisted in Sir James Scarlett before he was called to the bar, because teaching and practice cannot create a new faculty. They can create a new power; and a faculty is but a finer name for a power. ^tMr. Sedgwick loses sight of the very meaning of the word faculty—facultas. He talks of a faculty “powerless because untried.”^[*] A power powerless!^t*

The only colour for representing our moral judgments as the result of a peculiar part of our nature, is that our feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation are really peculiar feelings. But is it not notorious that peculiar feelings, unlike any others which we have experience of, are created by association every day? What does the Professor think of the feelings of ambition; the desire of power over our fellow-creatures, and the pleasure of its possession and exercise? These are peculiar feelings. But they are obviously generated by the law of association, from the connexion between power over our fellow-creatures and the gratification of almost all our other inclinations. What will the Professor say of the chivalrous point of honour? What of the feelings of envy and jealousy? What of the feelings of ^uthe^u miser to his gold? Who ever looked upon these last as the subject of a distinct natural faculty? Their origin in association is obvious to all the world. Yet they are feelings as peculiar, as unlike any other part of our nature, as the feelings of conscience.

It will hardly be believed that what we have now answered is all that Mr. Sedgwick advances, to prove the principle of utility untrue; yet such is the fact. Let us now see whether he is more successful in proving the pernicious consequences of the principle, and the “degrading effect” which it produces “on the temper and conduct of those who adopt it.”^[†]

The Professor’s talk is more indefinite, and the few ideas he has are more overlaid with declamatory phrases, on this point, than even on the preceding one. We can, however,^v descry through the mist some faint semblance of two tangible objections: one, that the principle of utility is not suited to man’s capacity—that if we were ever so desirous of applying it correctly, we should not be capable; the other, that it debases the moral practice of those who adopt it—which seems to imply (strange as the assertion is) that ^wthe^w adoption of it as a principle ^xis not consistent with an attempt^x to apply it correctly.

We must quote Mr. Sedgwick’s very words, or it would hardly be believed that we quote him fairly:—