were, through inattention, long regarded as originally flowing from the operations of this faculty. Dr. Hutchefon had the merit of being the first who distinguished with any degree of precision in what respect all moral diftinctions may be faid to arife from reason, and in what respect they are founded upon immediate fenfe and feeling. In his illuftrations apon the moral fenfe he has explained this fo fully, and, in my opinion, so unanswerably, that, if any controverfy is ftill kept up about this fubject, I can impute it to nothing, but either to inattention to what that gentleman has written, or to a fuperftitious attachment for certain forms of expreffion, a weakness not very uncommon among the learned, efpecially in fubjects fo deeply interefting as the prefent, in which a man of virtue is often loath to abandon, even the propriety of a fingle phrafe which he has been accuftomed to.

CHA P. III.

Of thofe fyftems which make fentiment the principle of approbation.

T

HOSE fyftems which make fentiment the principle of approbation may be divided into two different clafies.

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I. According to fome the principle of probation is founded upon a fentiment of a peculiar nature, upon a particular power of perception

perception exerted by the mind at the view of certain actions or affections; fome of which affecting this faculty in an agreeable and others in a difagreeable manner, the former are stampt with the characters of right, laudable, and virtuous; the latter with thofe of wrong, blameable and vitious. This fentiment being of a peculiar nature distinct from every other, and the effect of a particular power of perception, they give it a particular name, and call it a moral sense.

II. According to others, in order to account for the principle of approbation, there is no occafion for fuppofing any new power of perception which had never been heard of before: nature, they imagine, acts here, as in all other cafes, with the ftricteft oeconomy, and produces a multitude of effects from one and the fame caufe; and fympathy, a power which has always been taken notice of, and with which the mind is manifeftly endowed, is, they think, fufficient to account for all the effects afcribed to this peculiar faculty.

I. Dr. Hutcheson* had been at great pains to prove that the principle of approbation was not founded on felf-love. He had demonftrated too that it could not arise from any operation of reafon. Nothing remained, he thought, but to fuppofe it a faculty of a peculiar kind, with which nature had endowed the human mind, in order to produce this one particular and important effect. When felf

T

love and reafon were both excluded, it did not
occur to him that there was any other known
faculty of the mind which could in
fpect answer this purpose.

any re

This new power of perception he called a moral fenfe, and fuppofed it to be somewhat analogous to the external fenfes. As the bodies around us, by affecting thefe in a certain manner, appear to poffefs the different qualities of found, tafte, odour, colour; fo the various affections of the human mind by touching this particular faculty in a certain manner, appear to poffefs the different qualities of amiable and odious, of virtuous and vitious, of right and

wrong.

The various fenfes or powers of perception*, from which the human mind derives all its fimple ideas, were, according to this fyftem, of two different kinds, of which the one, were called the direct or antecedent, the other, the reflex or confequent fenfes. The direct fenfes were thofe faculties from which the mind derived the perception of fuch species of things as did not prefuppofe the antecedent perception of any other. other. Thus founds and colours were objects of the direct fenfes. To hear a found or to fee a colour does not prefuppofe the antecedent perception of any other quality or object. The reflex or confequent fenfes, on the other hand, were thofe faculties from which the mind derived the perception of such species of things as presupposed

*Treatife of the paffions.
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the

the antecedent perception of fome other. Thus harmony and beauty were objects of the reflex fenfes. In order to perceive the harmony of a found, or the beauty of a colour, we must first perceive the found or the colour. The moral fenfe was confidered as a faculty of this kind. That faculty, which Mr. Locke calls reflection, and from which he derived the fimple ideas of the different paffions and emotions of the human mind, was, according to Dr. Hutchefon, a direct internal fenfe. That faculty again by which we perceived the beauty or deformity, the virtue or vice of thofe different paffions and emotions was a reflex, internal fenfe.

Dr. Hutchefon endeavoured ftill further to fupport this doctrine, by fhewing that it was agreeable to the analogy of nature, and that the mind was endowed with a variety of other reflex fenfes exactly fimilar to the moral sense, fuch as a fenfe of beauty and deformity in external objects; a public fenfe, by which we fympathize with the happiness or mifery of our fellow-creatures; a fenfe of fhame and honour, and a sense of ridicule.

:

But notwithstanding all the pains which this ingenious philofopher has taken to prove that the principle of approbation is founded in a peculiar power of perception, fomewhat analogous to the external fenfes, there are fome confequences, which he acknowledges to follow from this doctrine, that will, perhaps, be regarded by many as a fufficient confuta

tion of it. The qualities, he allows *, which belong to the objects of any fense, cannot, without the greatest abfurdity be ascribed to the fense itself. Who ever thought of calling the sense of seeing black or white, the sense of hearing loud or low, or the sense of tasting fweet or bitter? And, according to him, it is equally abfurd to call our moral faculties virtuous or vicious, morally good or evil. These qualities belong to the objects of those faculties, not to the faculties themselves. If any man, therefore, was fo abfurdly conftituted as to approve of cruelty and injuftice as the highest virtues, and to disapprove of equity and humanity as the most pitiful vices, fuch a conftitution of mind might indeed be regarded as inconvenient both to the individual and to the fociety, and likewife as ftrange, furprising and unnatural in itself; but it could not, without the greatest abfurdity, be denominated vicious or morally evil.

Yet furely if we saw any man shouting with admiration and applaufe at a barbarous and unmerited execution, which fome infolent ty→ rant had ordered, we should not think we were guilty of any great abfurdity in denominating this behaviour vicious and morally evil in the highest degree, though it expreffed nothing but depraved moral faculties, or an ab furd approbation of this horrid action, as of what was noble, magnanimous and great.. Our heart, I imagine, at the fight of fuch a

*Illuftrations upon the moral fenfe. Sect. 1. page 237, et feq. Third Edition.

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fpectator,