either of more general differences, or of the special points on which those differences hang suspended. What those points are, as distinct from those on which there is an agreement, has never, I think, been satisfactorily laid down; or, to speak more correctly, there would seem to be no understood basis, no admitted principles, upon which the controversy might be brought to a decision.

After an attentive consideration of the arguments employed on each side of the debate, I cannot find that parties are agreed on any one of the following points :

First. Whether there are any moral propositions (by which I mean, propositions affirming some actions to be right, others wrong) that are immutably, or even absolutely true; that is, true in such a manner, that if any one were to assert the contrary of such propositions, he would assert what is false or false otherwise than in reference to the present actual constitution of the human mind?

Secondly. Whether the admission that there are certain immutable or absolute truths in morals, is sufficient effectually to negative the supposition that approbation and disapprobation are mere emotions?

Or, Thirdly. Whether the admission that certain moral truths are immutable (with or without the additional admission that our perception of these truths cannot resolve into a mere emotion,) neces

sarily obliges us to resort to reason as the faculty by which such truths are discovered ?*

To most persons I imagine it will appear, that, if these are really the points on which the controversy turns and I am unable to discover that

they can be different from these the maintainance of it must have been owing, not to any difficulty in determining such points, but to some carelessness in distinguishing them, or some disinclination to discuss them, on the part of some or other of the different sets of disputants engaged. With regard to the first point :

That there is something in morality that is absolute and immutable, that there is something right which never could be wrong, something wrong which never could be right; that the same actions which are right just now, must, if continuing in all respects the same, and performed under the same circumstances, be right at all times; that to pronounce them wrong, would be false now, and always false, whatever might be the constitution, the feelings, or the judgment of the being who pronounced them so,-all this is what seems to me to lie absolutely beyond the reach of doubt or question.

I should be inclined to represent Dr. Brown only as giving a negative to the first question - Dr. Hutcheson, Dr. Smith, and Sir James Mackintosh, an affirmative to the first, a negative to the second-Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart an affirmative to the first and second; but a negative to the third. Dr. Price gives an affirmative to all the three.

And in the next place, and in regard to the second point:

If, when we pronounce an action to be right, it is admitted that we pronounce something that is absolutely, not to say immutably, true of such action, then to affirm that, in thus pronouncing concerning the action, we mean only that the contemplation of it excites in us an agreeable emotion, seems to me an inconsistency of the most palpable nature.

An argument that has been used for the purpose of removing this inconsistency, (and which it is necessary to advert to, in limine,) is one which strikes entirely wide of the mark at which it aims.

We are told that, though in pronouncing an action to be right, we merely express an emotion felt by us, yet there is some absolute quality in the action which is proper to excite this emotion, and but for which the emotion would not arise; that consequently to say that we have the emotion, is to say something absolutely true of the action, namely, that the action has that absolute quality which excites the emotion.

Now in regard to this statement, I would only, at present, ask,-is the absolute quality which is here said to belong to the action (that quality by which the emotion is excited) is this quality the moral goodness or rightness of the action? If it is, then the action's being morally good or right, cannot merely imply that we have an agreeable emo

tion at the view of it; for the goodness of the action being supposed the quality which excites the emotion, must exist independently of that emotion. Surely it will not be said that the action is good, because the view of it affords us an agreeable emotion; and then that the emotion itself arises because the action is good.

On the other hand, if the moral goodness is not the quality which excites the emotion, the solution offered does not meet the difficulty. It is not enough to tell us, for instance, that the benevolence or the utility of an action is an absolute quality belonging to the action, and indicated by the emotion; the truth regarding the action which we are assuming, and yet assert, to be absolute, is, not that it is benevolent or useful; but, (supposing either benevolence or utility to be that for which it is determined to be morally good,) that a benevolent or a useful action, is good or right. In short, the absolute truth conveyed in affirming that we experience a particular emotion at the view of a particular sort of action, is not the absolute truth to which the present question relates, but another, and quite a different one.

Leaving however this, and all that regards the second point generally, as the subject of farther consideration in the sequel, I would now observe, in regard to the third point, that, if there are any absolute and immutable truths in morals, then no other faculty than that of reason itself would seem

competent to pronounce them to be such; and that we are every way warranted in ascribing this function to reason, is what I shall now endeavour more fully to make appear.

First, as a specific instance of an absolute and immutable truth in morals, I would offer this single proposition -"The happiness of any being ought to be promoted by himself and others, rather than his misery." Take this proposition by itself, and irrespectively of all circumstances not therein stated, and, I would ask, is it true? Could the contrary of it be conceived to be true? Nay, could the proposition itself ever cease to be true? If any one should say that it ever might or could be right, for a being to seek to cause misery to himself or others, simply for the sake of doing so, (for I repeat, the proposition is to be taken irrespectively of all extrinsic circumstances) or that it ever might or could cease to be right for a being to promote happiness rather than misery, if both were equally possible, say even if he were under the necessity of doing one or other, with no reason whatever on either side, but what might be perceived in the nature of each,-for it matters not how abstractly, nakedly, or sparingly, or with what limitations or provisions the necessary truth of the proposition specified is admitted,-with such a one I should be unable to argue farther. I can conceive no greater absurdities to which I could, by reasoning, reduce the opinions of an opponent in debate.