Chapter 83

is a somewhat singular phrase in an author recognizing a separate inborn faculty of Right. His analysis consists in a separation of the entire fact into three parts:--the perception of an action as right or wrong; (2) an emotion of pleasure or pain, varying according to the moral sensibility: (3) a perception of the merit or demerit of the agent. The first is of course the main question; and the author gives a long review of the history of Ethical doctrines from Hobbes downwards, interspersing reflections and criticisms, all in favour of the intuitive origin of the sense. As illustrative parallels, he adduces Personal Identity, Causation, and Equality; all which he considers to be judgments involving simple ideas, and traceable only to some primitive power of the mind. He could as easily conceive a rational being formed to believe the three angles of a triangle to be equal to one right angle, as to believe that there would be no injustice in depriving a man of the fruits of his labours.

On the second point--the pleasure and pain accompanying right and wrong, he remarks on the one-sidedness of systems that treat the sense of right and wrong as an intellectual judgment purely (Clarke, &c.), or those that treat it as a feeling purely (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume). His remarks on the sense of Merit and Demerit in the agent are trivial or commonplace.