ence of custom may be traced. In each rank and profession we expect a degree of those manners which experience has taught us to look for in them. As in each species of natural objects we are pleased with the conformity to the general type, so in each species of men we are pleased, "if they have neither too much nor too little of the character which usually accompanies their particular condition and situation." Our approbation of a certain kind of military character is founded entirely on habit; for we are taught by custom to annex to the military profession "the character of gaiety, levity, and sprightly freedom, as well as of some degree of dissipation." Whatever behaviour we have been accustomed to see in any order of men, comes to be so associated with that order, that whenever we see the one we expect to see the other, and are pleased or disappointed according as we see it or not. Nevertheless, there may exist a propriety of professional behaviour, independent of the custom which leads us to expect it; and we feel that, apart from all custom, there is a propriety in the gravity of manners which custom has allotted to the profession of a clergyman.

In the same way different manners are assigned to the different periods which mark human life. In youth we look for that sensibility, gaiety, and vivacity which experience teaches us to expect at that age; and at the extreme of life, a certain gravity and sedateness is the character which custom teaches us is both most natural and most respectable.

But nevertheless it is necessary not to exaggerate the effects of custom and fashion on our moral sentiments; for it is more concerning the propriety or impropriety of particular usages than about things of the greatest importance that their influence is most apt to cause perversion of judgment. "We expect truth and justice from an old man as well as from a young, from a clergyman as well as from an officer; and it is

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in matters of small moment only that we look for the distinguishing marks of their respective characters." No society could subsist a moment if custom could exercise such perversion over our moral sentiments, with regard to the general style of conduct and behaviour, as it exercises with regard to the propriety of particular usages. Uninterrupted custom prevented the philosophers of Athens recognizing the evil of infanticide; and to say that a thing is commonly done is daily offered as an apology for what in itself is the most unjust and unreasonable conduct.

CHAPTER VI.

THEORY OF CONSCIENCE AND DUTY.

THE theory of Hutcheson, that there exists in mankind an inward moral sense concerned with the direct perception of moral qualities in actions just as the sense of hearing or seeing is concerned with the direct perception of sounds or objects, or the theory of Shaftesbury that what we call conscience is a primary principle of human nature irresoluble into other facts, is very different from the theory of Adam Smith, who refers our moral perceptivity to the workings of the instinct of sympathy.

Having accounted for our moral judgments of the actions of others by bringing them to the test of our power to sympathize with them, he proceeds to explain our moral judgments concerning our own acts by a sort of reflex application of the same principle of sympathy. Our sense of duty, our feeling of conscience, arises simply from the application to our own conduct of the judgments we have learned to pass upon others. So that there really exists no moral faculty which is not originally borrowed from without.

In the same manner as we approve or disapprove of another man's conduct, according as we feel that, when we bring hiscase home to ourselves, we can sympathize or not with his motives; so we approve or disapprove of our own conduct according as we feel that, by making our case in imagination another

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man's, he can sympathize or not with our motives. The only way by which we can form any judgment about our own sentiments and motives is by removing ourselves from our own natural station, and by viewing them at a certain distance from us; a proceeding only possible by endeavouring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as they are likely to view them. All our judgment, therefore, concerning ourselves must bear some secret reference either to what are or to what we think ought to be the judgment of others. We imagine ourselves the impartial spectator of our own conduct, and according as we, from that situation, enter or not into the motives which influenced us, do we approve or condemn ourselves.

We do not therefore start with a moral consciousness by which we learn to judge of others, but from our judgments about others we come to have a moral consciousness of ourselves. Our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the characters and conduct of other people, and by observing that these command either our praise or blame, and that we ourselves affect them in the same way, we become anxious in turn to receive their praise and to avoid their censure. imagine what effect our own conduct would have upon us, were we our own impartial spectators, such a method being the only looking-glass by which we can scrutinize, with the eyes of other people, the propriety of our own conduct.

So we

Accordingly our sense of personal morality is exactly analogous to our sense of personal beauty. Our first ideas of beauty and ugliness are derived from the appearance of others, not from our own. But as we are aware that other people exercise upon us the same criticism we exercise upon them, we become desirous to know how far our figure deserves their blame or approbation. So we endeavour by the help of a looking-glass to view ourselves at the distance and with the eyes of other

people, and are pleased or displeased with the result, according as we feel they will be affected by our appearance.

But it is evident that we are only anxious about our own beauty or ugliness on account of its effect upon others; and that, had we no connexion with society, we should be altogether indifferent about either. So it is with morality. If a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own kind, "he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own. face." Society is the mirror by which he is enabled to see all these qualities in himself. In the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into or disapprove of his sentiments, he first views the propriety or impropriety of his own passions, and the beauty or depravity of his own mind.

The consciousness of merit, the feeling of self-approbation, admits therefore of easy explanation. Virtue is amiable and meritorious, by reference to the sentiments of other men, by reason of its exciting certain sentiments in them; and the consciousness that it is the object of their favourable regards is the source of that inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction which attends it, just as the sense of incurring opposite sentiments is the source of the torments of vice. If we have done a generous action from proper motives, and survey it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, we applaud ourselves by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial judge, whilst, by a reflex sympathy with the gratitude paid to ourselves, we are conscious of having behaved meritoriously, of having made ourselves worthy of the most favourable regards of our fellow-men.

Remorse, on the other hand, arises from the opposite senti