And the generous mind, although it cannot prevent the feeling from springing up on the occurrence of injury, is disposed to carry it no further than to repel aggression and to obtain redress, then suffers it to pass as soon as possible away, and buries the remembrance of it in perpetual oblivion.

Another auxiliary of the moral instincts in the government which God exerts over mankind through each other, is the sense of shame. Its power is tremendous, irresistible, overwhelming. No man can stand before it, and it is capable in this world of inflicting the pains of hell. We are created with a strong desire of the esteem and good opinion of our fellow men. No discipline can make us indifferent to the opinions of others. When we have done wrong, the reproaches of our own conscience are hard enough to bear. If we had no other punishment most of our of fences would be amply avenged. But the idea that others entertain as bad an opinion of us as we do ourselves, is often altogether insupportable. As a general principle it may be asserted, that disgrace is more terrible than guilt. And this fear becomes more and more intense as mankind become more

cultivated and delicate in their moral sensibilities. This sentiment lays the foundation for that omnipotent engine of moral influence, public opinion, which perhaps does more to keep the world under the laws of the moral instincts than every thing else put together. A man may endure the secret reproaches of his own conscience, but the frown of the universal soul of humanity is more than he can bear. And the Almighty, whose prerogative it is to bring good out of evil, makes use of bad men and bad passions to accomplish ends most beneficial to society. The moral judgments of good and bad men are the same with respect to the vices of others, even though the bad man may be guilty of the same himself. And even malignity and censoriousness God uses as whips and scorpions to scourge and keep in order the unprincipled and rebellious. This invisible, inappreciable, but irresistible power of public opinion becomes the executive and the guardian of that portion of the original moral instincts of humanity which has never been written, nor taken the shape of formal law. A very small part only of the moral instincts of the human mind, have ever been enacted into express

statutes, because no political authority could enforce them. A man may be very bad and still subject himself to no legal animadversion; but he does not therefore escape. Though he go into no court, and be convicted of no crime, and receive the condemnation of no judge, there is a judge which condemns him in every breast for the slightest aberration. And of the thousand actions we see done every day, nine hundred and ninety nine are influenced by regard to opinion where there is one influenced by regard for law.

Here then is another way, besides that of law and government, by which the moral instincts are made to react upon man and upon society, to restrain, elevate and purify it. That public opinion itself is constantly undergoing the process of elevation and purification. In this respect it has the advantage over laws, which when once written down, are apt to remain when society has outgrown them. Public opinion is amended and improved without any difficulty or formality. The fate of the bad man, the happiness of the good, the counsels of the wise, and the words of the eloquent, are ever operating to enlighten and strengthen public opinion in

favor of all that is good, and in condemnation of all that is bad.

But here a difficulty may suggest itself to some, how can an instinct be enlightened or strengthened? Is it not the very nature of an instinct to be uniform and unchanging? Is it not its very purpose to supply the place of reason and experience? How then can reason and experience improve it? And here it is that the two great schools of moral science have divided, one referring the moral sense altogether to reason and experience, and the other to primitive and instinctive conviction.

In my opinion both are right, and both are wrong, or rather as in most similar cases, neither party has taken in the whole truth. A moral instinct or intuition must be implanted within us by the benevolent Creator for our good, and must coincide with the absolute right of things, since the same allwise Being constituted the mind who constituted the circumstances in which it was to be placed. Reason and experience will perceive that coincidence between the instinct and the fitness of things and the best interests of man, and will of course strengthen the

sense of obligation to obey the instinct. But no reason, and no foresight of interest can explain the peculiar feeling of obligation, which springs up in the mind on the first presentation of certain moral acts. Reason and experience will more and more confirm the obligation of truth, but can never explain the sense of guilt, and shame, and fear, with which the first violation of truth is accompanied.

Then there are details of duty and artificial relations of society, which are not anticipated in those moral intuitions. The sense of obligation with regard to them is elaborated solely by reason and experience, but it is out of materials previously existing in the mind. For after all, the power to see what is right, which resides in reason and experience with regard to many duties, is altogether different from the feeling of obligation to do it, which is an independent principle in the mind, and seems to lie farther back and deeper than reason itself.

The sense of obligation to do what is right is itself an intuition, an ultimate fact, which cannot be resolved into any principles