6. Paradoxical goodness has contributed to occasion the error, that circumstances may promote vices into virtues and degrade virtues into vices. It seems to make a virtue of a vice, whereas it merely employs the less to stave off the greater of two moral evils. It gives countenance to an error mainly caused-1st, By what seems to be the caprice and self-contradiction of the moral faculty in respect of what it approves and disapproves; 2nd, By oversight of the dependence of moral behaviour on a moral animus. The moral faculty seems to approve in one age or society what it disapproves in another, and in the same individual at one time what it disapproves at another. In the second place a certain behaviour tends, irrespective of an animus, to pass for a virtue, and a certain behaviour, irrespective of an animus, to pass for a vice. The habitual utterance of truth tends, irrespective of an animus, to pass for a virtue, and the habitual utterance of untruth, irrespective of an animus, to pass for a vice; behaviour consonant to respect for right of property tends, irrespective of an animus, to pass for a virtue, and contrary behaviour for a vice. Now, the moral faculty, though unchanging as regards moral animus, varies greatly as to mere behaviour, and so seems at one time to uphold as virtue what at another it condemns as vice. Of course paradoxical goodness tends to beget and nourish the error. The needle is not more constant to the pole than impero-moral approval to an animus that affects either justice or purity. It varies as regards the rights to which it refers; for up to a late phase of moral development custom mainly determines our ideas of rights, and, of course, differently in different ages and societies; but it always approves the animus, Righteousness,-never its

contrary. It varies as regards what constitutes purity; for intuition of the higher forms of purity is not possible in advance of a late phase of the development of reverence; but it never fails to approve what its subject apprehends as purity: it never approves what it apprehends as impurity. In so far as moral approval relates to beneficence, it is essential to it to approve what, according to the belief of the subject, is, relatively to mankind, beneficent, and to moral reprobation to reprove what, according to that belief, is the reverse. Not that in moral discernment we have always or even commonly in view either beneficence or what relates to mankind. Moral intuition excludes such a reference, and of moral inferences it is only in those which consider a criterion of moral approval and censure that the subject refers to mankind and human welfare. But in so far as we approve righteousness we necessarily, but for the most part inadvertently, approve what, according to our belief, is most conducive to human welfare, and, in so far as we condemn unrighteousness, we necessarily, but for the most part inadvertently, condemn what, according to our belief, is universally maleficent.

7. Those who are for fastening the stigma of caprice on the moral faculty hold it responsible for approval and censure that do not proceed from it. Depravity has its approvals and reprobations1 as well as the moral faculty, e.g. those of the depraved, "who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such

1 Depraved approval and reprobation are not moral in the sense in which the word means 'belonging to the moral faculty," but are moral in the sense in which it imports, "being of a nature to elicit moral discernment."

things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that do them." These being imputed to the moral faculty it is made responsible for savage approval of savage manners, for example, of parricide in one society, polyandry in another, theft in another, lying in another. We have been abused in respect of moral intuition by this confusion of ideas.

8a. But the constancy of the moral faculty as regards the intentions it approves and those it disapproves did not exempt it from a terrible error,the error that Retribution is a species of justice. In this respect it has been the dupe of fierceness. In the view of fierceness retribution is compensation, and as in other respects when right is violated duty exacts compensation, punishment seemed also to be due compensation. This cause of error was backed by the intimacy of the connection between reprobation and anger, an intimacy so great that the connection seemed to be essential. To those who take for granted that indignation is essential to moral reprobation, the pain which indignation desires to inflict seems to be a requital prescribed by the moral imperative, by eternal Justice. The connection however is merely accidental. There is no more an absolutely necessary relation between moral reprobation and anger than between æsthetic disgust and anger; and, except as supplying the place of the courage needful for the prevention of wrong, anger is an impediment to the moral faculty. Imagine a man pre-eminent in wisdom and courage but void of irascibility. He cordially but without animosity apprehends the wrong-doer as a reprobate, is prompt to apply against him what preventive violence duty may exact, but is incapable of inflicting

retributive pain. conceive what is denoted by the terms "retribution and "punishment," and, when made to understand them, he would regard as infernal the spirit they signify. His reprobation is modified by charity. By the way it must be acknowledged that to the illiterate Nazarene who founded Christendom belongs the credit of having elicited the conduct and experience which have detached animosity from reprobation,-rescued the moral sense from fierceness. Is it possible that he intended the resulting charity to put out the fires of hell, to extinguish the doctrine of Hell? This would seem to be a necessary consequence, one that Christ could not fail to foresee.

It would be difficult for him to

It

86. Let us pause a moment to consider the baleful source of our belief in Hell and of a great part of human misery. We have proverbially allowed that anger is a brief insanity, and nevertheless, under the form of indignation, it seems to be noble; sometimes, as when it thunders in a philippic, even sublime. is really a convulsion, an analogue of St. Vitus' dance. Relatively to the ends of the short-sighted it may sometimes be useful; but it is always stultifying, always debasing. To have due moral apprehension of the evil in others and to be morally resolute, it is not necessary to go into convulsions. After all, as a condition of moral energy, a fit of anger is at most a fit of Dutch courage. In view of the fact that, with rare exceptions, men are worked by an unconscious force, there is no consistent room for anger; for, even those who approve of the passion allow that it is illegitimate when provoked by irresponsible behaviour, e.g. by that of the insane. We are stultified by the

cerebral process that makes us apprehend as culprit the puppet of cerebration. Nero, from this point of view, is a proper object of pity, not of anger, and sinners are more sinned against than sinning. Therefore anger always stultifies. It always debases; not only because stultification is debasement, but because anger holds us at the level of the bad animus that provokes. One who cordially knows the optionless condition of man is above the reach of provocation. To be short of this superiority is debasement. Anger against a necessary agent, even though the agent be human, is about as worthy as the kicking of a stone that has stubbed the toe. Is it not time for man to set about relieving himself of this disgrace? The enterprise is by no means a desperate one. He who endeavours to domesticate the apprehension of man as dupe, puppet, and victim of nature, will soon find that the sentiment has an allaying property. If the method of salvation had room for a philosophic reason, Christ, I am persuaded, would have applied this sentiment; but until the preparation of heart-intelligence by childlike obedience has advanced a certain way, reasoning tends to precipitate religion.

CLXXVII.

Uti

The discredit cast upon the moral faculty on account of its seeming inconsistency and self-contradiction has been mainly urged against it by the Utilitarian. litarianism comprehends three species, of which one may be distinguished as sordid, another as historical, the third as disinterested. The first is that which denies the existence of disinterested altruism; the