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under the head of 'Moral Relations.' He there defines moral good and evil to be the conformity to 'some law,' whereby good and evil are drawn upon us by the will and power of the lawmaker. 1 We are subject to three kinds of laws, the law of God, the civil law, and the law of opinion or reputation.' 2 The law of God is enforced by the pains and penalties of the next world. Nobody can take us out of his hands. His will 'is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude; and by comparing them to his law it is that men judge of the most considerable moral good or evil of their actions; that is, whether as duties or sins they are likely to procure them happiness or misery from the hands of the Almighty.' The civil law determines men's criminality or innocence, and the 'philosophical law,' or law of opinion, varying widely in different countries, determines their virtue or vice. This, though wanting in precision, is the law by which men most frequently govern themselves; for its sanctions, vaguer than those of other laws, are more continually present to the imagination than those of the divine law, and less easily evaded than those of the civil law. These various laws may, of course, conflict as in the case of duelling, which is a sin tried by the law of God, a virtuous action by the law of fashion'—another synonym for the law of opinion—and a capital crime according to the civil law of some countries. "

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90. The law of God, then, is the only permanent and invariable standard; for the other laws vary-and, so far as Locke expounds his theory-vary indefinitely according to time, place, and circumstance. The law of God, too, must override the other laws in case of conflict; or, in his own language, be the only true touchstone of moral rectitude.' How, then, is the all-important question, can this law be discovered? If God's will be concealed in impenetrable mystery, virtue would apparently become a mere arbitrary fashion. That is Mandeville's solution. If the divine will be discoverable only by revelation, Locke's theory coincides with that of the theological utilitarians. The motive is with him, as with Paley, the dread of hell and the hope of heaven. He tells us himself that the Gospel gives an absolutely pure code of mo

1 Locke, book ii. ch. xxviii. sec. 5.

2 Ib. sec. 7.

Ib. sec. 8.

4 Ib. sec. 15.

rality, and for that reason he excuses himself to Molyneux for not undertaking to write a treatise on the subject.1 Locke, however, would not have admitted that our knowledge of morality was dependent on revelation. In fact, the whole argument of the treatise on the 'Reasonableness of Christianity' implies that the heathen philosophers could discover a system approximating very closely to that directly promulgated from heaven. How, then, could they arrive at a knowledge of the divine law? What was the criterion by which they were to distinguish between moral good and evil?

91. The curious vacillation which runs through Locke's reasoning upon morality, and which thus makes moral truth alternately quite uncertain and mathematically demonstrable, is but one instance of the general inconsistency in his theory of reality. According to Locke, as I have elsewhere observed, our knowledge of the external world cannot be scientifical,' We can only know phenomena, and know that they do not correspond (except in the case of the 'primary' qualities) to the objective facts beneath them. Certainty is attained only by comparison of ideas. We may know them adequately, for they exist entirely in our minds. Hence we may obtain certainty in mathematics; we have only to compare our ideas in order to discover geometrical relations, and we know (it matters not how) that those ideas are the counterparts of external realities. The same, according to Locke, may be said of moral relations. Though he expresses himself very indistinctly, his notion seems to be that in moral questions we are reasoning about certain things of which we know 'the precise real essence,' because they are entirely 'ideas in the mind.' 2 Thus, for example, we might compare our idea of justice with our idea of stealing, and observe that they did not correspond; whence the truth that stealing is unjust may be proved with the same certainty as the truth that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. The obvious difficulty is, that this doctrine seems to make morality certain in the sense in which a verbal proposition is certain, and in that sense alone. We are merely unfolding our definition, or explaining that what we call just does not include what we call stealing. 1 See letter to Molyneux of March 30, 1696. * Locke's Essay, book iii. ch. xi, secs. 16 and 17.

This remark was made by Berkeley. To demonstrate morality,' he says, in his commonplace book, 'it seems one need only make a discovery of words and see which included which.

. . Locke's instances of demonstration in morality are, according to his own rule, trifling propositions.' Locke, it is clear, never distinctly realised his own position, and, whatever escape he might have attempted, it is plain that no such process as he contemplates could be reconciled with his general utilitarianism. The certainty which he would attain is not a certainty as to the tendency of actions to produce happiness. Any such theory must involve an objective element, and, on Locke's general theory, cannot be part of scientifical knowledge. Here, as in the whole philosophy of which it forms a part, Locke's teaching is palpably inconsistent, and the attempt to deduce a coherent doctrine would be waste of labour.

92. Berkeley's moral theory is not sufficiently prominent to require investigation. The next great theorist of Locke's school was Hume, and Hume preferred his moral treatise to all his other writings. The reason for this preference, so far as one ever can discover an author's motives for selfjudgment, will be tolerably plain. Here, we may say, Hume has, at least, some excuse for saying that he has obtained a definite constructive result. When Hume gave a second version of his metaphysics and psychology in the Essays, he mangled the earlier Treatise of Human Nature' with singular want of parental affection. Part is rewritten, and much is altogether omitted. The later version of his ethics contained in the 'Enquiry' bears a different relation to the ethics of the treatise. All the essential principles reappear, though some points are more lightly touched; but they reappear in a substantially new exposition. The literary texture of the 'Enquiry' shows everywhere the magic touch of Hume's lucid intellect. Morality, perplexed or mysterious with most of his predecessors, becomes admirably simple. All the doctrines fall into their place spontaneously. One obvious principle solves all doubts. The very lucidity may appear suspicious to many thinkers; but all must admit that the essential doctrines of utilitarianism are stated by Hume with a clearness

1 Berkeley, Works, iv. 449.

and consistency not to be found in any other writer of the century. From Hume to J. S. Mill, the doctrine received no substantial alteration. It was Hume's aim to state the principles of morality in such a way as to bring it entirely within the domain of science. Granting the truth of his theories, he succeeded admirably. The only object of reasoning,' he says (that is, of ethical reasoning), 'is to discover the circumstances on both sides which are common to these' (the estimable or blamable) 'qualities, to observe that particular in which the estimable qualities agree on the one hand, and the blamable on the other; and thence to reach the foundation of ethics, and find those universal principles from which all censure or approbation is ultimately derived. As this is a question of fact, not of abstract science, we can only expect success by following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances.'1 The science of morality, then, is to be based on experience. Hume succeeded so far as he definitely and systematically admitted this appeal. He failed in so far as, from his standing-point, it was impossible to form an adequate conception of the method by which the appeal should be made.

93. This method of approaching the problem implies the dismissal of all ontological and teleological speculation. Clarke's method of deducing morality from the intuitions of pure reason must be abandoned along with Butler's method. of discovering morality by divining the purposes of the Creator. Hume's objections to the first method are radical.2 Reason by itself cannot prompt us to act. It can make us aware that an object which excites our passions does or does not exist, or it can show that the means by which we would gratify our passions are or are not adequate. But it is not by itself a motive. "Tis not contrary to reason,' he says, 'to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. 'Tis not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person totally unknown to me.'3 Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a combat between reason and passion.

Hume's Works, iv. 174.

2 Treatise of Human Nature,' book ii. part iii. sec. 3; book iii. part iii. sec. 1 ; appendix i. to 'Enquiry.' * Works, ii. 195.

'Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.' The phraseology is wantonly paradoxical in sound, because in his early treatise Hume aimed at being paradoxical. But it expresses the view which would be taken in sober seriousness by all scientific reasoners. The reason is the faculty which enables us to frame a mental picture of the world corresponding to the external reality. It would show that the total suffering caused by the destruction of the world was greater than the suffering caused by scratching my finger. But unless I were benevolent enough to feel for others, the bare fact would not impel me to scratch my finger to save the world, any more than the knowledge that a guinea was worth one-and-twenty shillings would make me prefer a guinea to a shilling if I had no love of money. If I was malevolent instead of benevolent, it might have the contrary effect. Hence all the reasonings of Clarke's school about the eternal and inherent essences of things are thrown away. If sound, they might reveal to us certain truths, but the mode in which those truths affected us would still be a question of experience. These moralists fill the gap in their system, as Hume points out,' by suddenly substituting for the copula 'is' or 'is not' the copula 'ought' or 'ought not.' The reason may regulate and guide the passions by enabling us to compare their objects. It cannot supply the place of the passions.

94. The distinction thus drawn between the reason and the passions raises the most difficult of psychological problems. The connection between the emotions and the intellect is indefinitely intricate. Every mental process has its emotional and its intellectual side. It is impossible, therefore, to describe the fully developed structure of the mind without taking into account a whole series of complex actions and reactions between the two factors. And, for this reason, Hume's psychology, set forth in the second book of the Treatise, is the least satisfactory part of his work, as it was that which was most ruthlessly cut down in the Essays. Only a mangled remnant reappears as the brief Treatise on the Passions,' and ends 2 Ib. 245.

1 Hume's Works, ii. 195.

3 Hume partly recognises this truth in the section Malice and Envy' of the Treatise, ii. 159.