Chapter 39

modes of estimating them; the Difficulties attending the Practice of Virtue; the use of Trials, and the essentials of a good or a bad Character. The considerations adduced are a number of perfectly well-known maxims on the practice of morality, and scarcely add anything to the elucidation of the author's Moral Theory. The concluding chapter, on Natural Religion, contains nothing original.

To sum up the views of Price:--

I.--As regards the Moral Standard, he asserts that a perception of the Reason or the Understanding,--a sense of fitness or congruity between actions and the agents, and all the circumstances attending them,--is what determines Right and Wrong.

He finds it impracticable to maintain his position without sundry qualifications, as we have seen. Virtue is naturally adapted to _please_ every observing mind; vice the contrary. Right actions must be _grateful_, wrong ungrateful to us. To _behold_ virtue is to _admire_ her. In contemplating the actions of moral agents, we have _both_ a perception of the understanding and a feeling of the heart. He thus re-admits an element of feeling, along with the intellect, in some undefined degree; contending only that _all morality_ is not to be resolved into feeling or instinct. We have also noticed another singular admission, to the effect that only superior natures can discover virtue by the understanding. Reason alone, did we possess it in a high degree, would answer all the ends of the passions. Parental affection would be unnecessary, if parents were sufficiently alive to the reasons of supporting the young, and were virtuous enough to be always determined by them.

Utility, although not the _sole_ ground of Justice, is yet admitted to be _one_ important reason or ground of many of its maxims.

II.--The nature of the Moral Faculty, in Price's theory, is not a separate question from the standard, but the same question. His discussion takes the form of an enquiry into the Faculty:--'What is the power within us that perceives the distinctions of Right and Wrong?' The two questions are mixed up throughout, to the detriment of precision in the reasoning.

With his usual facility of making concessions to other principles, he says it is not easy to determine how far our natural sentiments may be altered by custom, education, and example: while it would be unreasonable to conclude that all is derived from these sources. That part of our moral constitution depending on instinct is liable to be corrupted by custom and education to almost any length; but the most depraved can never sink so low as to lose all moral discernment, all ideas of just and unjust; of which he offers the singular proof that men are never wanting in resentment when they are _themselves_ the objects of ill-treatment.

As regards the Psychology of Disinterested Action, he provides nothing but a repetition of Butler (Chapter III.) and a vague assertion of the absurdity of denying disinterested benevolence.

III.--On Human Happiness, he has only a few general remarks. Happiness is an object of essential and eternal value. Happiness is the _end_, and the _only_ end, conceivable by us, of God's providence and government; but He pursues this end in subordination to rectitude. Virtue tends to happiness, but does not always secure it. A person that sacrifices his life rather than violate his conscience, or betray his country, gives up all possibility of any present reward, and loses the more in proportion as his virtue is more glorious.

Neither on the Moral Code, nor in the relations of Ethics to Politics and to Theology, are any further remarks on Price called for.

ADAM SMITH. [1723-90.]

The 'Theory of the Moral Sentiments' is a work of great extent and elaboration. It is divided into five Parts; each part being again divided into Sections, and these subdivided into Chapters.