independent grounds, the Laws according to which our Judge will administer his rewards. We believe that He will reward what is right and punish what is wrong: but we believe that He intends us to use our rational and moral faculties in discovering what is right and what is wrong. He has given us other helps in the task, but He has not superseded these. We cannot be content to make our Morality depend, as Paley does, on these two steps;-that God wishes the happiness of mankind, and that therefore he will reward what we do for the promotion of that happiness; for we conceive that to determine in what sense human happiness is to be understood, when we say that God wishes it and wishes us to promote it, is far more difficult, than it is to determine God's will by seeking for it in the Supreme Rule of human action besides which, even if we could determine what this happiness is, we might still be unable to discern the best means of promoting it. But we do not doubt that the Supreme Rule of human action, the rule which requires action to be right, is identical with the Will of God; and that His Will is the highest and strongest sanction by which any Rule can be enforced.

Though, as we have already said, our Morality does not depend upon actually existing human Laws, nor even upon the necessary existence of Law; yet will Morality, and the Laws which necessarily exist in human society, rest upon the same foundation, the moral nature of man. And in tracing this fundamental basis of Law and of Morality into a system of each, there may be, and naturally will be, a correspondence between certain general provinces and divisions of the one and of the other, of Law and of Morality. And thuis as we have five leading kinds of Rights, we have also five leading kinds of Duty and of Virtue. These five are Benevolence, Justice, Truth, Purity, and Wisdom; which last, reckoned by Aristotle and others as an intellectual virtue,

(in distinction to the others, which are termed moral virtues) may be called Order; since it manifests itself both in the discovery of right Rules and of means for upholding them. Without pressing too much upon the parallelism between these five kinds of Virtue and the five kinds of Rights respectively, we may venture to say that these five Virtues may be regarded as a convenient division of Virtue, so far as virtue is divisible: and these may deserve to be termed the Cardinal Virtues, far better than that ancient quaternion which moralists have so often assumed, of Justice, Temperance, Fortitude and Prudence. And as this is a division of Virtues, which are habits of action, so is it a division of Duties, which are occasions of such actions; and we have Duties of Benevolence, of Justice, of Truth, of Purity and of Order.

Duty is a term which especially belongs to Morality, not to Law. The term Obligation is used in both subjects: we speak of the legal Obligation of paying our debts, and the moral Obligation of relieving the distressed. It would produce some convenience if the term were confined to the former meaning; but at any rate the two senses ought not to be confounded. We ought not to speak, as Paley does, of obliged and ought as synonymous terms; seeing that men are often obliged to do what they ought not to do.

Nor again, ought the habit of such phraseology to lead us to suppose that because legal obligations are always obligations to some person, therefore moral obligations are also always due to some person. Duties to others, as they are sometimes termed, are much better spoken of as Duties simply for they are to be performed not only out of regard to others, as what they ought to have, but far more, from regard to ourselves and what we ought to be.

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To every (Legal) Obligation which we contract or have, corresponds a Right which another person requires or has:

If how

but to our Duties correspond no Rights of others. ever we wish for a correlative term to Duties, we may use the phrase Moral Claim; we may say that a poor man in distress has a Moral Claim on his rich neighbour, even if the law do not give him a legal Right.

And many of our Duties which regard our special relations to particular persons, and which we may therefore term Relative Duties, may be conveniently arranged and treated of according to those Relations.

Having these views of the most convenient way of using the term Obligation, we should avoid using such terms as perfect and imperfect Obligation, which have been common among Moralists. Such phrases have the inconvenience of implying that no Obligations are perfect but those which the law imposes, and that all our Duties are of the nature of Debts, only less perfect in degree.

It may be asked how we can apply these general heads of our System to particular actions and to special moral questions, such as Moralists are expected to decide: and it may be urged that some reference to the results of actions and to some external object of action is requisite for such purposes. But it will be found that this is not so, and that a consideration of the ideas of Benevolence, Justice, Truth, Purity and Order, determined in the way in which we have determined them, combined with a regard to the various relations in which men stand to each other, will enable us to draw out a complete scheme of human duties. And we conceive that this is not only a possible mode of proceeding, but that it is the way in which men do naturally and spontaneously endeavour to decide for themselves such moral questions as come before them. If the doubt be what course of action Justice, or Truth, requires, and if they reason morally on the question, they do not generally so much consider what will come of each course,-what they will gain or lose by it,—as what

it is that Justice, or that Truth means, and how the meaning is applicable in the particular case. That in this manner a detailed scheme of human duties, and a solution of ordinary moral questions may be obtained, is, we conceive, shown in the Elements of Morality which have been published with this view.

Although we begin the arrangement of our Morality by taking account of the kinds of Rights established among men by actual Law, this, as we have already said, does not prevent our passing judgment upon existing Laws as moral or immoral, just or unjust. But though some existing Laws may be unjust, we must in our System of Morals, and in all systems of morals which can be recognized by human society, look upon existing Laws in general with great respect, as highly important elements in all moral questions. In general, what is Property, what is a Contract, what is a Marriage, in any Society, must be determined by the Laws of that Society; and as our Duties, as well as our legal Obligations, are concerned about Property, Contract, Marriage, and the like, our Morality must involve a regard to existing Laws. The existing Laws of each state belong to its history;have grown out of its history or with its history, and change with its historical changes. Hence our Morality, besides involving the ideal elements of which we have spoken, the ideas of Justice, Truth, and the like, must include an historical element, belonging to each separate community. Along with the Idea of Morality we must include the Fact of Law. And the bearings of Law and Morality, the dependence of what ought to be on what is, the conversion of what is into what ought to be in each community,-forms a large and important province of speculation which we can by no means leave out of our consideration. To this province belong all general questions of Political Morality; questions concerning the Rights and Duties of Governments as well as of individuals.

We may add, as also coming within the sphere of our reasonings, questions of Justice concerning property, contracts, and the like, as determined by supposing the most general forms of actual Law, which province we may term General Jurisprudence.

The radical part of the term Jurisprudence, namely Jus, (the special study of Jurists) denotes a branch of speculation which may be distinguished from Morality proper by saying that Jus is the doctrine of Rights and Obligations, Morality the doctrine of Virtues and Duties; the term Obligations being here used in the strict sense above spoken of.

Besides these, we conceive it proper to include in our Morality questions as to what is just and right in the dealings of nations with one another. This is commonly termed International Law; but since there is no supreme authority among nations by which Laws affecting them can be enforced, these questions can only be discussed by assuming a common understanding respecting the Rights and Obligations of nations; and hence the subject may rather be termed International Jus.

The subject of Religion is intimately connected with Morality; or indeed Religion may rather be said to include the subject of Morality, regarding it according to her own special view of man's nature, condition, and prospects. But there result important advantages from treating separately Morality according to Reason, and Morality according to Religion and this therefore we do.

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The explanation which has thus been given of the relation of our System of Morality to the Systems published by other writers, will have shown in a great degree the objections to the schemes of our predecessors, which prevent our resting satisfied with their labours. With regard to Paley's Principles of Moral Philosophy in particular, the book which is recognized by the University of Cambridge as