which accompanies the apprehension of the beautiful. By virtue Hume means "whatever mental action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation." "Crime or immorality is no particular fact or relation which can be the object of the understanding; but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or treachery."1

The specific character of moral quality was forgotten; indeed, it was resolved into utility; just as æsthetic quality was resolved into utility by other members of the same school. But the unguarded language used led to the belief which is expressed by Reid that “Mr. Hume will have the moral sense to be only a power of feeling without judging;" which he rightly objects to as an abuse of the word sense.

Modern writers commonly refrain from the use of this ambiguous term. Whether moral apprehension be of the nature of external perception, as Reid maintained, or like the recognition of beauty as Shaftesbury maintained, the word "sense" is inapplicable.

§ 4. Moral Reason.

What then is the part played by the intellect in the apprehension of moral quality?

The perception of the external acts which constitute conduct is, of course, primarily intellectual; and so is Hume, "Essays," pp. 480-483 (Ward and Lock).

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the self-conscious recognition of motives, volitions, feelings, which we call internal perception. The recognition of the relations between the outer facts, between the inner facts, and between the two groups, is intellectual: e.g. the recognition that a given act is a means to a given end. Any moral apprehension

which can be thrown into the form of a judgment is necessarily an intellectual act; nor, as we have just seen, was this really denied by Hume. To say that such moral quality is apprehended by reason1 is only to affirm that it is objective, that it does not exist for me alone, but for all minds.

We must distinguish between the discursive and the intuitive employment of reason in matters of morality. When we infer that a given ethical proposition is true because of its connection with some other ethical proposition; when we recognize a given act as good or right because it leads to some end, or an end as good because it leads to some more ultimate end, we are exercising reason discursively.

But we naturally assume that our chain of inferences is not self-supporting; that it is somewhere fastened to a point of support, some staple in the wall. There cannot, we feel, be endless retrogression. Inference must terminate in intuition, in the recognition of some ultimate major premise. If our knowledge as a whole is justifiable at the bar of reason this premise must be justifiable. In other words, Reason

By Reason we mean the completest and most thorough employment of our intelligence.

can guarantee the ultimate premise; there is such a faculty as intuitive reason. The existence of discursive reason implies it.

For examples of such ultimate ethical premises we may refer to chap. v., §§ 4 and 5. And even if we allege that the knowledge is self-supporting, that the system rests on nothing external but maintains itself by virtue of its own inner relations (like the solar system or the vortex-ring), the acceptance of this point of view itself is due to something more than ordinary reasoning; it is the selection of a starting-point as in itself less needing justification than the judgments dependent on it.

This rational starting point in Ethics may be (1) the immediate recognition of moral quality in acts or motives; or (2) the immediate recognition of moral truth in judgments. The former is merely moral perception; it is not simple and ultimate, but contains implicit judgment like all other kinds of perception. All we mean by the moral quality perceived, is the relation that the given act bears to our ideals of conduct. This relation (or rather set of relations) is analogous to those which subsist in the case of an object of external perception viewed in its æsthetic aspect. Whatever be the origin of our moral perceptions there is no doubt we have them now; any more than there is doubt that we immediately perceive objects as beautiful or ugly.

The second kind of intuitive apprehension is the recognition of the truth of ultimate general proposi

tions which are incapable of being supported by further inference: which must, at any rate for the given discussion, be taken as final. This has been sufficiently illustrated in the chapter on Intuition.

Reason (i.e. the intellectual powers in their completest form) has more to do with conduct than simply to give us ethical principles and ethical conclusions. It has a practical as well as theoretical function, for it serves as a guide or regulator of action. Before a course of action is determined on, we require to know that it is possible. A civilized man is capable of consistent action for an end, or in obedience to a rule. Although this purposive consistency of action which constitutes conduct does not constitute the whole of virtue (since, to give no other reason, it may be for a bad end), it forms a very large part of virtue. This systematization is due to Reason, which suppresses impulses that lead astray or are in direct conflict with the means necessary to secure the ends aimed at.

Besides all this, Reason may be called a spring of action. Reid, Stewart, and other philosophers have regarded the practical function of Reason as merely directive and regulative. It suppresses what is irrational and therefore wrong, but it cannot, they say, originate action. In the same way some modern thinkers allege that Reason cannot give an end, it can only give us the means to an end which is demanded by active impulse.' But most people will agree that a man may act from principle as well Gizycki and Coit, pp. 85 seq.

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as feeling. A vivid perception that a certain course of conduct is in conflict with a recognized law leads a man to give it up; although his mere feelings may be wholly on the side of the prohibited line of action. Kant indeed actually asserted that no other kind of right-doing is really virtuous; it is only when we do right because it is right, and not because we want to do it or take pleasure in it, that, strictly speaking, we are doing right at all. It is certain that in a properly constituted mind the perception that an action is right is an irresistible motive for doing it ; but whether the motive lies in the mere intellectual state itself or is rather to be ascribed to the specific emotion accompanying such a state, is not so easily decided. With all use of reason is bound up emotion. The distinction between intellect and emotion is indeed like all other analysis, a logical device. In nature continuity is always present. We must not forget that in moral, as well as in other matters, man judges and acts as man and not like a logic machine.

Intellect is thus a spring of action. We act in a certain way because we recognize that way as right. It matters not whether we say that the intellectual act itself is the motive, or that the intellectual act is accompanied by a specific desire, the desire to act rationally, and that this is the actual motive power. For ethical purposes the two statements are equivalent.

Moral reason, then, which simply means reason as concerned with morals, has a fourfold office: