of the sciences, have required so prodigious a superiority of genius in the single instance of approach to success by Bacon, as to discourage rivalship nearly as much as the frequent examples of failure in subsequent times could do. The nomenclature itself is attended with great difficulties, not indeed in its conception, but in its adoption and usefulness. In the Continental languages to the south of the Rhine, the practice of deriving the names of science from the Greek must be continued; which would render the new names for a while unintelligible to the majority of men. Even if successful in Germany, where a flexible and fertile language affords unbounded liberty of derivation and composition from native roots or elements, and where the newly derived and compounded words would thus be as clear to the mind, and almost as little startling to the ear of every man, as the oldest terms in the language, yet the whole nomenclature would be unintelligible to other nations. But, the intercommunity of the technical terms of science in Europe having been so far broken down by the Germans, the influence of their literature and philosophy is so rapidly increasing in the greater part of the Continent, that though a revolution in scientific nomenclature be probably yet far distant, the foundation of it may be considered as already prepared.

Although so great an undertaking must be reserved for a second Bacon and a future generation, it is necessary for the historian of any branch of knowledge to introduce his work by some account of the limits and contents of the sciences of which he is about to trace the progress; and though it will be found impossible to trace throughout this treatise a distinct line of demarcation, yet a general and imperfect sketch of the boundaries of the whole, and of the parts, of our present subject, may be a considerable help to the reader, as it has been a useful guide to the writer.

There is no distribution of the parts of knowledge

more ancient than that of them into the physical and moral sciences, which seems liable to no other objection than that it does not exhaust the subject. Even this division, however, cannot be safely employed, without warning the reader that no science is entirely insulated, and that the principles of one are often only the conclusions and results of another. Every branch of knowledge has its root in the theory of the Understanding, from which even the mathematician must learn what can be known of his magnitude and his numbers; moral science is founded on that other, hitherto unnamed,—part of the philosophy of human nature (to be constantly and vigilantly distinguished from intellectual philosophy), which contemplates the laws of sensibility, of emotion, of desire and aversion, of pleasure and pain, of happiness and misery; and on which arise the august and sacred landmarks that stand conspicuous along the frontier between Right and Wrong.

But however multiplied the connections of the moral and physical sciences are, it is not difficult to draw a general distinction between them. The purpose of the physical sciences throughout all their provinces, is to answer the question What is? They consist only of facts arranged according to their likeness, and expressed by general names given to every class of similar facts. The purpose of the moral sciences is to answer the question What ought to be? They aim at ascertaining the rules which ought to govern voluntary action, and to which those habitual dispositions of mind which are the source of voluntary actions ought to be adapted.

It is obvious that "will," "action," "habit," "disposition," are terms denoting facts in human nature, and that an explanation of them must be sought in mental philosophy, which, if knowledge be divided into physical and moral, must be placed among physical sciences, though it essentially differs from them all in having for its chief object those laws of thought which alone render any other sort of knowledge possible. But

it is equally certain that the word "ought" introduces the mind into a new region, to which nothing physical corresponds. However philosophers may deal with this most important of words, it is instantly understood by all who do not attempt to define it. No civilised speech, perhaps no human language, is without correspondent terms. It would be as reasonable to deny that "space" and "greenness" are significant words, as to affirm that "ought," "right," "duty," "virtue," are sounds without meaning. It would be fatal to an ethical theory that it did not explain them, and that it did not comprehend all the conceptions and emotions which they call up. There never yet was a theory which did not attempt such an explanation.

SECTION I.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

THERE is no man who, in a case where he was a calm bystander, would not look with more satisfaction on acts of kindness than on acts of cruelty. No man, after the first excitement of his mind has subsided, ever whispered to himself with self-approbation and secret joy that he had been guilty of cruelty or baseness. Every criminal is strongly impelled to hide these qualities of his actions from himself, as he would do from others, by clothing his conduct in some disguise of duty, or of necessity. There is no tribe so rude as to be without a faint perception of a difference between Right and Wrong. There is no subject on which men of all ages and nations coincide in so many points as in the general rules of conduct, and in the qualities of the human character which deserve esteem. Even the grossest deviations from the general consent will appear, on close examination, to be not so much corruptions of moral feeling, as

ignorance of facts; or errors with respect to the consequences of action; or cases in which the dissentient party is inconsistent with other parts of his own principles, which destroys the value of his dissent; or where each dissident is condemned by all the other dissidents, which immeasurably augments the majority against him. In the first three cases he may be convinced by argument that his moral judgment should be changed on principles which he recognises as just; and he can seldom, if ever, be condemned at the same time by the body of mankind who agree in their moral systems, and by those who on some other points dissent from that general code, without being also convicted of error by inconsistency with himself. The tribes who expose new-born infants, condemn those who abandon their decrepit parents to destruction: those who betray and murder strangers, are condemned by the rules of faith and humanity which they acknowledge in their intercourse with their countrymen. Mr. Hume, in a dialogue in which he ingeniously magnifies the moral heresies of two nations so polished as the Athenians and the French, has very satisfactorily resolved his own difficulties:-"In how many circumstances would an Athenian and a Frenchman of merit certainly resemble each other!-Humanity, fidelity, truth, justice, courage, temperance, constancy, dignity of mind." "The principles upon which men reason in Morals are always the same, though the conclusions which they draw are often very different." He might have added, that almost every deviation which he imputes to each nation is at variance with some of the virtues justly esteemed by both, and that the reciprocal condemnation of each other's errors which appears in his statement entitles us, on these points, to strike out the suffrages of both when collecting the general judgment of mankind. If we bear in mind that the question relates to the coincidence of all men in con

* Philosophical Works, (Edinb. 1826,) vol. iv. pp. 420, 422.

sidering the same qualities as virtues, and not to the preference of one class of virtues by some, and of a different class by others, the exceptions from the agreement of mankind, in their system of practical morality, will be reduced to absolute insignificance; and we shall learn to view them as no more affecting the harmony of our moral faculties, than the resemblance of our limbs and features is affected by monstrous conformations, or by the unfortunate effects of accident and disease in a very few individuals.

*

It is very remarkable, however, that though all men agree that there are acts which ought to be done, and acts which ought not to be done; though the far greater part of mankind agree in their list of virtues and duties, of vices and crimes; and though the whole race, as it advances in other improvements, is as evidently tending towards the moral system of the most civilized nations, as children in their growth tend to the opinions, as much as to the experience and strength, of adults; yet there are no questions. in the circle of inquiry to which answers more various have been given than-How men have thus come to agree in the Rule of Life?' Whence arises their general reverence for it? and What is meant by affirming

* "On convient le plus souvent de ces instincts de la conscience. La plus grande et la plus saine partie du genre humain leur rend témoignage. Les Orientaux, et les Grecs, et les Romains conviennent en cela; et il faudroit être aussi abruti que les sauvages Américains pour approuver leurs coutumes, pleines d'une cruauté qui passe même celle des bêtes. Cependant ces mêmes sauvages sentent bien ce que c'est que la justice en d'autres occasions; et quoique il n'y ait point de mauvaise pratique peut-être qui ne soit autorisée quelque part, il y en a peu pourtant qui ne soient condamnées le plus souvent, et par la plus grande partie des hommes."Leibnitz, Œuvres Philosophiques, (Amst. et Leipz. 1765, 4to.) p. 49. There are some admirable observations on this subject in Hartley, especially in the development of the 49th Proposition:-"The rule of life drawn from the practice and opinions of mankind corrects and improves itself perpetually, till at last it determines entirely for virtue, and excludes all kinds and degrees of vice."- Observations on Man, vol. ii. p. 214.