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But the conscience may be aided by all its auxiliary powers-by an enlightened intellect, by a good-will, by cultivated sensibilities, æsthetic, moral and religious; that is, by sensibilities trained and habituated to normal action. Under this condition, this normal consensus of the moral faculties, which is called the moral consciousness, the liability to error is reduced to a minimum, though error there may be, for man, in his best estate, is not perfect.

Contra to these views, there is a long line of writers who hold that conscience is not native to the soul, but is the product of force, as in the evolution theory; or of environment, as in the Darwinian; or is the product of associated' ideas, of custom, usage, law in the social relations of men; or else is the product of intellect and the sensibilities applied to a consideration of comparative pyschology, namely, to the relative place and value of the desires and affections of the soul in their bearing upon the well being of the individual and of mankind.

Among recent writers, this last is the view ably and eloquently argued at great length by President Porter, in his "Elements of Moral Science," with a weight of authority due to one of his distinction. Not to notice it, might be construed as avoiding it.

As to the "functions of the intellect in moral activities and experiences," Dr. Porter [sections 39-48], after certain suggestions, to-wit: "That psychology leads to philosophy, prepares the way for moral science, and asks how the intellect acts in ethical processes; but that it cannot answer this ques

tion without implying that the intellect also evolves certain products known as ethical cognitions or conceptions" elaborately discusses said functions under the following heads:

"1. Moral distinctions do not originate in the civil law.

"2. Moral relations do not originate with society. "3. Moral distinctions are not originated by the fiat of the Creator, and therefrom reaches the conclusion that the intellect does not derive moral relations from without the individual man, either in the form of information, or authority, or influence, but that it develops and learns them from within."

"Our next problem," he says, "is to explain the processes by which they are originated within the man himself."

But first Dr. Porter notices and discusses "the several theories which teach that the fundamental ethical concepts and sentiments are original; that all these theories, however antagonistic in other particulars, have this in common-that they find the origin of ethical conceptions and feelings within the individual man, and wholly reject the doctrine that makes them the products of external influences and teachings."

A concise statement of these theories runs thus: 1. The theory of the moral sense-a capacity for the moral sentiments.

2. The theory that "finds the original of our moral relations in the pure intellect, or the reason; i. e., in certain ethical categories, which take rank with those that are fundamental to the intellect;

'the very notion of virtue implies the notion of obligation.' (Stewart.) What is true of the sentiment of obligation is true of the other feelings, as of selfapprobation or disapprobation. The relation is selfevident to the intellectual judgment or assent, and the sentiments or feelings attend them by an equally necessary but unexplained coherence."

3. The theory that finds a faculty called the practical reason, which presents to the will an authoritative judgment technically called the categoricalimperative. To this the will responds by reverence which impels to action. This theory, as it would seem, is a combination of the two preceding, and is represented by Kant and his ethical followers.

4. [Dr. Porter's theory.] "We hold that moral reations and feelings require no special faculty or endowment, whether it be called the moral reason, or moral sense, or practical reason; but that they are the necessary products or results of two conspicuous human endowments-the reflective intellect and the voluntary impulses or affections. . . . So soon as the intellect reflects upon the several sensibilities which are subject to the control of the will, as compared with one another, it must find a standard of ideal desirableness or worth for its springs of action.

"According to this theory [continues Dr. Porter] the moral relations, so far as they are rational or intellectual, are not original categories, but are the necessary result of a special application of the category of adaptation or design. It also follows that the sentiments of self-approbation, obligation and merit, are also special applications of the com

monly recognized human sensibilities, as affected by man's free and personal activity when reviewed by man's conscious or reflective judgment. It follows that the moral nature or the moral faculty are but other names for the human faculties when employed upon a special subject-matter, and in a peculiar manner. The products of this special but natural mode of activity are moral ideas and moral emotions."

On the above brief yet fairly full extracts relative to Dr. Porter's theory of morals, comment must also be brief. His suggestion that psychology cannot inform us how the intellect acts in ethical processes without implying that intellect evolves ethical cognitions, suggests that Dr. Porter's theory of the origin of ethical thought and feeling is one of evolution, possibly as objectionable as the Spencerian, which he justly condemns; thus [his Elements, section 45]: "The evolutionist's theory of morals presupposes that the conception of perfect moral excellence, as an ideal, is the end or aim to which all social arrangements and influences tend and move; . . . but how did it come into being as a thought, if it were not previously existing as a fact? . . . According to the law of evolution, the absolute morality in both ideal and law is yet to be evolved. What it will be and what it is to be are problematic ideas and truths, concerning which no man can affirm with positiveness who derives his ethical conceptions from the processes of evolution."

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Do not these same words of condemnation apply to a theory of morals like Dr. Porter's, that sets up an

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ideal standard to be attained to by an intellectual consideration and comparison, in conscious psychology, of the ordinary human affections, desires and motives as good and better, and a choice of the better and higher, prior to and as means for a production, generation or evolution of moral ideas and emotions? Dr. Porter, in section 48, values his own theory because it "develops and learns moral relations from within" and proposes to "explain the processes by which they are originated within the man himself." But what kind of a within is it? It is a within of ordinary motives impelling the will, which the intellect persuades the will to control in accord with the fitness of each to help attain to the ideal standard. This joint action generates moral emotions: "Ideas of right and wrong are, so to speak, the creations of the individual man." On the contra, the within of the second and third theories discussed by Dr. Porter, and which we have cited as above, is a within of an inborn moral nature endowed with "love of the right" and a conscious faculty employed about the instruction and control of the will.

Assuming that Dr. Porter's "special subject-matter" relates to "duty and the right," would it exist for man if man had not a special moral endowment, without which the understanding would not perceive moral relations, more than it would perceive worldobjects, as objects of experience, if there were no mental faculties thus to interpret the impressions of sense?

Dr. Porter cites, among others, President James. McCosh as an advocate of the second theory above

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