manageable, as this "Reflexion," is introduced side by side with the clear bodily definite realities of the senses (Sensation), it can hardly hold its place securely as a philosophical term. It means too little or it means too much. It means too little to balance the sensible world, or too much to be heaped together without analysis. Accordingly, while, as I have said, our own most reasonable philosophers have taken refuge in this term Reflexion' to an extent which well nigh overturns Locke's system altogether; those of other countries (the French followers of Locke for example) have, more consistently, discarded it, as a merely ceremonious expression; and have boldly asserted, as Locke's great doctrine, that all our ideas are derived from the senses. Now this doctrine concerning ideas irresistibly fastens upon us the ethical tenet, that right and wrong are some modifications or other of bodily good and ill, that is, bodily pleasure and pain. And thus Locke's name is made the badge of the Sensualist School of morals, such as the School appeared in the time to which he belonged.

Yet, in fact, Locke himself would not only have disclaimed this position, into which his followers have thus thrust him, but he really did cherish many views and speculations which were altogether at variance with the spirit and tendency of the Sensualist system of morals. These were probably the remnants of his education in the philosophical school which preceded him. In truth, this inconsistency is a general, perhaps a universal character of the founders of new systems of opinion: such persons run onwards from their predecessors, but they do not cease to hear their voices, and to share their feelings. They reach a new point of view, but they look backwards with regard, as well as forwards with hope. They mount some unfrequented summit, but they retain traces of the vale out of which they have climbed. They point the way to a new region, but they themselves retain the habili

ments and the speech of the country out of which they have come. They are not aware of the magnitude and completeness of the revolution they have produced; and often dwell with fondness on the expected endurance of things, of which they themselves have prepared the termination.

Some such indications we find in the moral doctrines of Locke. For example, notwithstanding the account which, as you have heard, he gives of the nature of Morals, he repeatedly and anxiously discusses the question, whether Morality be capable of demonstration. And he decides that it is so, or may become so, on the ground of that very system of ideas which he had laboured so strenuously to destroy. This is the way he reasons. "The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness and wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and on whom we depend; and the idea of ourselves, as understanding, natural beings: being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action, as might place. morality among the sciences capable of demonstration; wherein I doubt not but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences." No moralist, even of the school of Cudworth, would need to claim more than is here conceded.

But how this is to be made consistent with the doctrine that moral good and evil are only pleasure and pain; or how the amount of pleasure or pain which any action produces is to be brought into such a demonstration, are far harder questions: questions which, I think, none of Locke's followers have yet solved.

Accordingly, the greater part of Locke's disciples have * Essay, B. IV. ch. iii. § 18.

disregarded altogether these suggestions respecting a morality founded upon ideas, and established by means of demonstration; and have clung to that kind of morality which is really the only one consistent with his general view of human nature; that which makes moral good and evil merely the means of producing pleasure and pain respectively. And as the Lockian philosophy was rapidly diffused in England, and deeply infused into the general tone of speculations on all subjects; so this view of Morality was, in speculation at least, and among those whose minds required consistency in the systems which they embraced, very generally accepted and maintained. The Hobbian opinions, softened and guarded no doubt, but not fundamentally altered, were in a great measure victorious, No one will deny, I think, that in the general aspect of the principles and method of their philosophy, Locke and his school approach incomparably more to Hobbes than they do to his antagonist Cudworth.

In saying this, it will be understood that I speak of the general tendency of the Lockian philosophy: for in its actual result, its evil consequences were averted by means of cautionary principles introduced by the most moderate and judicious writers of the school, and countenanced, as we have already seen, by Locke himself. But all these stipulations and correctives did not prevent the promulgation of Locke's philosophy from being felt as a vast accession of strength by the lower, and a great addition to the difficulty of their task by the higher, school of morality. Since that time, the morality of consequences has been almost universally accepted; and the assertors of essential and independent distinctions of good and evil have found but a scanty audience and a cold reception.

Still, however, the other side of the question has never been without its representatives; and I must now notice those who belong to the time of which I speak. The principal

figure among these is the celebrated Dr Samuel Clarke, (afterwards the friend of Newton,) who was educated at Caius College in this University in 1691, and the succeeding years. His dissertations on the Being and Attributes of God, and on the Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion, do not refer to the nature of morals, as a principal subject; but still, we find in these works clear assertions of the eternal nature of moral distinctions. We cannot doubt, he teaches, that all the relations of all things to all, must have always been present to the Eternal Mind. In this sense, the relations are eternal, however recent may be the things between which they subsist. These eternal relations of things, different one from another, involve a consequent eternal fitness or unfitness in the application of things one to another: in regard to which fitness, the will of God always chooses, and which ought likewise to determine the wills of all subordinate rational beings. These eternal differences make it fit and reasonable for the creatures so to act; they cause it to be their duty, or lay upon them an obligation so to do, separate from the will of God, and antecedent to any prospect of advantage or reward. Wilful wickedness is the same absurdity and insolence in morals, as it would be in natural things to pretend to alter the relations of numbers, or to take away the properties of mathematical figures. And to explain, what might appear startling, in thus separating between Moral Right and the Divine Command, he says, "They who found all moral obligation on the will of God must recur to the same thing; only they do not explain how the nature and will of God is good and just."

Clarke, then, is an assertor of the independent and necessary character of moral distinctions. But in making this assertion, he declares such distinctions to be perceived by the Reason; and this he does, just at the time when, in virtue of the teaching of Descartes, Locke, and others, the

Reason had been separated from the other faculties, limited to the operations of the intellect, and deprived of its direct intercourse with the emotions and affections, the materials of our moral nature. The cause of independent morality was in this way presented under great disadvantages.

Clarke was one of the most zealous promoters of the new physical philosophy. Soon after taking his degree in this University, he was actively engaged in introducing into the academic course of study, first, the philosophy of Descartes in its best form, and next, the philosophy of Newton immediately after its first publication. He was naturally led, therefore, both by his familiarity with recent metaphysical distinctions, and by his love of demonstration, to ascribe a great weight to intellectual relations, and to overlook as parts of the subject those in which the intellect had not a direct or sole jurisdiction. If this had not been the case, he could hardly have failed to see how insufficient an account of moral distinctions it was, to say that the denial of them implies an absurdity and a contradiction. When Cudworth and the ancient philosophers talked of wickedness being contrary to Right Reason, the Reason was looked upon as the governing faculty of all provinces of man's nature. It was the fountain and treasure-house of all fundamental general principles, by which we judge of truth of all kinds; and it was also the authority which applied these principles to their practical uses. So viewed, therefore, the Reason was qualified to pronounce moral judgments; to extricate out of her own nature the speculative truths which are involved in her recognized functions. But now the case was altered. The office of Reason had been greatly narrowed and bounded; and this had been done, I will suppose, for the sake of argument, with great advantage to the clearness and distinctness of metaphysical doctrines; still this change made it less safe than before to say, that eternal distinctions of moral good