CHAPTER FOURTH.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

MR. LOCKE's quibbles, founded on the word innate, were early remarked by Lord Shaftesbury. "Innate is a word he poorly plays upon; the right word, though less used, is connatural. For what has birth, or progress of the fœtus out of the womb, to do in this case? The question is not about the time the ideas entered, or the moment that one body came out of the other; but whether the constitution of man be such, that being adult or grown up, at such or such a time, sooner or later, (no matter when) certain ideas will not infallibly, inevitably, nccessarily spring up in him.” t

It has often struck me as a very remarkable circumstance, after what Locke has written with so much zeal against innate principles, both speculative and practical, that his own opinion upon this subject, as distinctly stated by himself in other parts of his works does not seem to have been, at bottom, so very different from

* If any of my readers should think, that in this section, I make too wide, and too abrupt a transition from the question concerning the origin of our knowledge, to that which relates to the moral constitution of human nature, I must beg leave to remind them that, in doing so, I am only following Mr. Locke's arrangement in his elaborate argument against innate ideas. The indefinite use which he there makes of the word idea, is the chief source of the confusion which runs through that discussion. It is justly observed by Mr. Hume, that "he employs it in a very loose sense, as standing for any of our perceptions, our sensations and passions, as well as thoughts."-"Now, in this sense," continues Mr. Hume, "I should desire to know what can be meant by asserting, that self-love, or resentment of injuries, or the passion of love between the sexes, is not innate?" The following passage, which forms a part of the same note, bears a close resemblance in its spirit to that quoted in the text from Lord Shaftesbury.

"It must be confessed, that the terms employed by those who denied innate ideas, were not chosen with such caution, nor so exactly defined, as to prevent all mistakes about their doctrine. For what is meant by innate? If innate be equivalent to natural, then all the perceptions and ideas of the mind must be allowed to be innate or natural, in whatever sense we take the latter word, whether in opposition to uncommon, artificial, or miraculous. If by innate be meant contemporary to our birth, the dispute seems to be frivolous; nor is it worth while to inquire at what time thinking begins, whether before or after our birth."-Hume's Essays, Vol. II, (Note A.)

† I have substituted, in this quotation, the phrase certain ideas, instead of Shaftesbury's example, the ideas of order, administration, and a God; with the view of separating his general observation from the particular application which he wished to make of it, in the tract from which this quotation is borrowed.-(See Letters to a Student at the University, Letter 8.)

Lord Shaftesbury's, as either of these eminent writers imagined. All that has been commonly regarded as most pernicious in the first book of his essay, is completely disavowed and done away by the following very explicit declaration :

"He that hath the idea of an intelligent, but frail and weak being, made by and depending on another, who is omnipotent, perfectly wise and good, will as certainly know, that man is to honor, fear, and obey God, as that the sun shines when he sees it. For if he hath but the idea of two such beings in his mind, and will turn his thoughts that way and consider them, he will as certainly find, that the inferior, finite, and dependent, is under an obligation to obey the supreme and infinite, as he is certain to find that three, four, and seven are less than fifteen, if he will consider and compute those numbers; nor can he be surer in a clear morning that the sun is risen, if he will but open his eyes, and turn them that way. But yet these truths being never so certain, never so clear, he may be ignorant of either, or all of them, who will never take the pains to employ his faculties as he should to inform himself about them."*

It would not be easy to find a better illustration than this of the truth of Locke's observation, that most of the controversies among philosophers are merely verbal. The advantage, in point of unequivocal expression, is surely, in the present instance, not on his side; but notwithstanding the apparent scope of his argument, and still more, of the absurd fables which he has quoted in its support, the foregoing passage is sufficient to demonstrate, that he did not himself interpret (as many of his adversaries, and I am sorry to add, some of his admirers, have done,) his reasonings against innate ideas, as leading to any conclusion inconsistent with the certainty of human knowledge, or with the reality and immutability of moral distinctions.

I have enlarged on this collateral topic at greater length than I would otherwise have done, in consequence chiefly of the application which has been made,

* Locke's Essay, B. iv. c. xiii. § 3.

since Locke's time, of the principles which I have been controverting in the preceding chapters, to the establishment of a doctrine subversive of all our reasonings concerning the moral administration of the universe. Dr. Hutcheson, one of the most zealous and most able advocates for morality, seems to have paved the way for the scepticism of some of his successors, by the unguarded facility with which, notwithstanding his hostility to Locke's conclusions concerning innate practical principles, he adopted his opinions, and the peculiarities of his phraseology, with respect to the origin of our ideas in general. I already observed, that, according to both these writers, "it is the province of sense to introduce ideas into the mind; and of reason, to compare them together, and to trace their relations; "—a very arbitrary and unfounded assumption, undoubtedly, as I trust has been sufficiently proved in a former part of this argument; but from which it followed as a necessary consequence, that, if the words right and wrong express simple ideas, the origin of these ideas must be referred, not to reason, but to some appropriate power of perception. To this power Hutcheson, after the example of Shaftesbury, gave the name of the moral sense: a phrase which has now grown into such familiar use, that it is occasionally employed by many who never think of connecting it with any particular philosophical theory.

Hutcheson himself was evidently apprehensive of the consequences which his language might be supposed to involve; and he has endeavoured to guard against them, though with very little success, in the following caution: "Let none imagine, that calling the ideas of virtue and vice perceptions of sense, upon apprehending the actions and affections of another, does diminish their reality, more than the like assertions concerning all pleasure and pain, happiness or misery. Our reason often corrects the report of our senses about the natural tendency of the external action, and corrects such rash conclusions about the affections of the agent. whether our moral sense be subject to such a disorder as to have different perceptions from the same apprehended affections in any agent, at different times, as the

But

eye may have of the colors of an unaltered object, it is not easy to determine: perhaps it will be hard to find any instances of such a change. What reason could

correct, if it fell into such a disorder, I know not; except suggesting to its remembrance its former approbations, and representing the general sense of mankind. But this does not prove ideas of virtue and vice to be previous to a sense, more than a like correction of the ideas of color in a person under the jaundice, proves that colors are perceived by reason, previously to sense." Mr. Hume was not to be imposed upon by such an evasion; and he has accordingly, with his usual acuteness, pushed this scheme of morals (which he evidently adopted from Hutcheson and Shaftesbury) to its ultimate and its legitimate conclusion. The words right and wrong, (he asserted,) if they express a distinction at all analogous to that between an agreeable and a disagreeable color can signify nothing in the actions to which they are applied, but only certain effects in the mind of the spectator. As it is improper, therefore, (according to the doctrines of Locke's philosophy) to say of an object of taste that it is sweet, or of heat that it is in the fire, so it is equally improper to speak of morality as a thing independent and unchangeable. "Were I not," says he, "afraid of appearing too philosophical, I should remind my readers of that famous doctrine, supposed to be fully proved in modern times, 'that taste and colors, and all other sensible qualities, lie, not in the bodies, but merely in the senses.' The case is the same with beauty and deformity, virtue and vice." * In consequence of this view of the subject, he has been led to represent morality, as the object, not of reason, but of taste; the distinct offices of which he thus describes: "The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood; the latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: the other has a productive quality, and, gilding or staining all natural objects with the

* Hume's Essays, Vol. I. Note (F).

colors borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation." *

Without abandoning the hypothesis of a moral sense, Hutcheson might, I think, have made a plausible defence at least, against such inferences as these, by availing himself of the very ingenious and original remark which I already quoted from his own works, with respect to extension, figure, and motion. Unfortunately, he borrowed almost all his illustrations from the secondary qualities of matter; whereas, had he compared the manner in which we acquire our notions of right and wrong, to our perception of such qualities as extension and figure, his language, if not more philosophical than it is, would have been quite inapplicable to such purposes, as it has been since made subservient to, by his sceptical followers.

Extension was certainly a quality peculiarly fitted for obviating the cavils of his adversaries; the notion of it (although none can doubt that it was originally suggested by sense,) involving in its very nature an irresistible belief that its object possesses an existence, not only independent of our perceptions, but necessary and eternal, like the truth of a mathematical theorem.

The solid answer, however, to the sceptical consequences deduced from the theory of a moral sense, is to deny the hypothesis which it assumes with respect to the distinct provinces of sense and of reason. That the origin of our notions of right and wrong, is to be referred to the latter part of our constitution, and not to the former, I shall endeavour to show in another work. At present, I shall only observe, that how offensive soever this language may be to those whose ears have been exclusively familiarized to the logical phraseology of Locke, it is perfectly agreeable to the common apprehensions of mankind; which have, in all ages, led them to consider it, not only as one of the functions of reason, but as its primary and most important function, to guide our choice, in the conduct of life, between right and

• Hume's Essays, Vol. II. Appendix, concerning Moral Sentiment. † See p. 69.