whole round of human action; the Idealist emphatically preaches that Honesty ought to be practised, because it is right; for its own sake. In the words of Horace, "Oderunt peccare boni, virtutis amore.” Duty is the only standard, "Ought" the only watchword which he fights under in the contest concerning Moral Nature. § 73. But here it is speciously argued No absolute standard of right or wrong that there can be no absolute right or wrong for that the standard has been ever fluctuating from age to age. What is right in one century is considered wrong in the next. Various nations have various standards of morality. Acts which are considered crimes in one country, are tolerated, or enjoined, or considered virtuous in another, Individuals have different ideas of right and wrong. How can it then be maintained that there is any immutable Right which can form the criterion of moral action? (1) Instances. § 74. Thus the sceptic Pilate asked Christ,. What is truth? Thus Montaigne scoffs at the "But they are possibility of any absolute standard of right. pleasant" say she "when to give some certainty to the Laws, sternly refused, because the ultimate effect of an unjust Law would be more injurious to the State, than its immediate effect would be productive of utility. Thus, the Proverb 'Honesty is the best policy', may be also asked in a secondary or figurative sense, in which it is perhaps unobjectionable. It is thus that the ingenious Owen Felham thinks of honesty. "There is no man but for his own interest hath an obligation to be honest. There may be sometimes temptations to be otherwise; but all cards cast up, he shall find it the greatest ease, the highest profit, the best pleasure, the most safety, and the noblest fame, to hold the horns of this altar which in all assays, can in himself protect him. And though in the march of human life over the stage of this world, a man shall find presented sometimes examples of thriving vice, and several opportunities to invite him on a seeming advantage to close with unhandsome practices; yet every man ought so to improve his progress or what is just and right, as to be able to discern the fraud and feigned pleasureableness of the bad, and to choose and follow what is good and warrantable." 1. See Lock on the Understanding. L. I. C. III § 9. L. 11. C. 28. § 10. MONTAIGNE-PALEY. : 264 ; they say that there are some firm, perpetual, and immoveable, which they call natural, that are imprinted in human kind by the condition of their own proper being and of these some reckon three, some four, some more, some less a sign that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest. Now they are so unfortunate (for what can I call it else but misfortune that of so infinite a number of laws there should not be found one at least that fortune and the temerity of chance has suffered to be universally received by the consent of all nations) they are I say so miserable, that of these three or four select laws there is not one so much that is not contradicted and disowned not only by one nation but by many." Paley. $75. Paley uses this argument to refute the existence of a Moral Sense: and he puts the matter so clearly and forcibly, that I must trespass on your time to excerpt it. "Those who deny the existence of a "moral sense" says he "remark from authentic accounts of "historians and travellers, that there is scarcely a single vice "which, in some age or country of the world, has not been "countenanced by public opinion: that in one country, it is "esteemed an office of piety in children to sustain their aged parents, in another, to dispatch them out of the way that 'suicide, in one age of the world, has been heroism, is in "another felony: that theft, which is punished by most laws, "by the Spartan was not unfrequently rewarded: that the pro"miscuous commerce of the sexes, although condemned by "the regulations and censure of all civilized nations, is prac"tised by the savages of the tropical regions without reserve, compunction, or disgrace: that crimes, of which it is no "longer permitted us even to speak, have had their advo"cates amongst the sages of very renowned times that, if "an inhabitant of the polished nations of Europe be delight"ed with the appearance, wherever he meets with it, of "happiness, tranquillity, and comfort, a wild American is no : "less diverted with the writhings and contortions of a vic"tim at the stake: that even amongst ourselves, and in the "present improved state of moral knowledge, we are far from "a perfect consent in our opinions or feelings that you shall "hear duelling alternately reprobated and applauded, accord“ing to the sex, age, or station, of the person you converse "with: that the forgiveness of injuries and insults is account"ed by one sort of people magnanimity, by another meanness : "that in the above instances, and perhaps in most others, "moral approbation follows the fashions and institutions of "the country we live in ; which fashions also and institutions "themselves have grown out of the exigencies, the climate, "situation, or local circumstances of the country; or have "been set up by the authority of an arbitrary chieftain, or "the unaccountable caprice of the multitude :—all which, 'they observe, looks very little like the steady hand and in"delible characters of nature." (1) Sir James Mackintosh. § 76. Mackintosh meets this thus :“There is no tribe so rude as to be without a faint percep❝tion of a difference between Right and Wrong. There is "no subject on which men of all ages and nations coincide in "so many points as in the general rules of conduct, and in the qualities of the human character which deserve esteem. (2) "Even the grossest deviations from the general consent will appear on close examination, to be not so much corruption 66 66 (1) See a collection of parallel cases, Cicero Tuse. I. v. S. 27. (2) Compare this with the following passage in Cicero :"Nihil est enim unum uni tam simile, tam par, quam omnes inter nos metipsos sumus. Quod si depravatio consuetudinum, si opinionum varietas non imbecillitatem animorum torqueret, et flecteret quocunque cœpisset; sui nemo ipse tam similis esset, quam omnes sunt omnium : itaque quæcunque est hominis definitio, una in omnes valet."-De Leg. L. i. S. x. And again "Quae autem natio non comitatem, non benignitatem, non gratum animum et beneficii memorem diligit? quæ superbos, quæ maleficos quæ crudeles, quæ ingratos non aspernatur, non odit.?"—Id. S, xi. of moral feeling, as ignorance of facts, or errors with respect "to the consequences of action ; or cases in which the dis"sentient party is inconsistent with other parts of his own "principles, which destroys the value of his dissent; or "where each dissident is condemned by all the other dissi"dents, which immeasurably augments the majority against "him. In the first three cases he may be convinced by ar"gument that his moral judgment should be changed on principles which he recognises as just; and he can seldom, "if ever, be condemned at the same time by the body of "mankind who agree in their moral systems, and by those "who on some other points dissent from that general code, "without being also convicted of error by inconsistency with "himself. The tribes who expose new-born infants condemn "those who abandon their decrepit parents to destruction, "those who betray and murder strangers, are condemned by "the rules of faith and humanity which they acknowledge in "their intercourse with their countrymen." Whewell. : §77. This is generally expressed; but Whewell searches it deeper. "The conceptions of the fundamental Rights of men are "universal, and flow necessarily from the Moral Nature of man the Definitions of these Rights are diverse, and are "determined by the Laws of each State. The conceptions of "Personal Security, Property, Contract, Family, exist every"where; and man cannot be conceived to exist as a moral being, in a social condition, without them. The Rules by "which Personal Safety, Property, Contract, Families are maintained and protected, are different in different com"munities, and will differ according to the needs and pur"poses of each community. The Rules of Morality are uni"versal and immutable, so far as they are expressed in "terms of these Conceptions in their general form : it is always our Duty to respect the Personal Safety, the Pro 267 ST. AUGUSTINE. 'perty, the Contracts, the Family Ties, of others. But if we go into those details of Law by which these conceptions are in different communities differently defined, the Rules "of morality may differ." * And again : "Nations and communities, as well as individuals, have "their standards of right and wrong, which assume the rea"lity of a Universal Standard of Right and Wrong. They "have not only Laws, which determine Rights and Obli"gations, but also current moral Precepts and Rules, which "express the conceptions of Duties and Virtues. The assum"ed existence of a Standard of right and wrong shows itself "in the sentiments which are associated with the conceptions "and names of Virtues and Vices. Vices are, in all ages "and countries, named only to be condemned. Violence, "Fraud, Falsehood, Indecency, are objects of aversion at all "times and places. There is no nation or language, which "has not the means of expressing this; and none, which "does not express it." St. Augustine. § 78. Let me quote to you a remarkable passage in St. Augustine: "Certain half-waking men there are," says he, "who nei"ther altogether asleep in folly, nor yet thoroughly awake in "the light of true understanding, have thought that there is "not at all any thing just and righteous in itself; but look "wherewith nations are inured, the same they take to be right and just. Whereupon their conclusion is that seeing each sort of people hath a different kind of right from other, and that which is right of its own nature must be everywhere one and the same, therefore in itself there is 66 nothing right. These good folks (that I may not trouble "their acts with rehearsal of too many things) have not "loooked so far into the world as to perceive that 'Do as |