§ 8.

On reviewing the claims of the Moral Sense doctrine, it appears that there is à priori reason for expecting the first principle of social morality to originate in some feeling, power, or faculty of the individual. Quite in harmony with this belief, is the inference that as desire is found to be the incentive Edition: current; Page: [31] to action where motives are readily analyzable, it is probably the universal incentive; and that the conduct we call moral is determined by it as well as other conduct. Moreover we find that even the great maxim of the expediency-philosophy presupposes some tendency in man towards right relationship with his fellow, and some correlative perception of what that right relationship consists in. There are sundry phenomena of social life, both past and present, that well illustrate the influence of this supposed moral sense, and which are not readily explicable upon any other hypothesis. Assuming the existence of such a faculty, there appears reason to think that its monitions afford a proper basis for a systematic morality; and to the demurrer that their variability unfits them for this purpose, it is replied that, to say the least, the foundations of all other systems are equally open to the same objection. Finally, however, we discover that this difficulty is apparent only, and not real: for that whilst the decisions of this moral sense upon the complex cases referred to it are inaccurate and often contradictory, it may still be capable of generating a true fundamental intuition, which can be logically unfolded into a scientific morality.