of sensation, imagination, ambition (pride and vanity), self-interest, sympathy, and theopathy (affection towards God), as far as they are consistent with one another, with the frame of our natures, and with the course of the world, beget in us a moral sense, and lead us to the love and approbation of virtue, and to the fear, hatred, and abhorrence of vice.  This moral sense, therefore, carries its own authority with it, inasmuch as it is the sum total of all the rest, and the ultimate result from them; and employs the whole force and authority of the whole nature of man against any particular part of it that rebels against the determinations and commands of the conscience or moral judgment.’

Hartley’s analysis of the moral sense is a great advance upon Hobbes and Mandeville, who make self-love the immediate constituent, instead of a remote cause, of conscience.  Our moral consciousness may thus be treated as peculiar and distinguishable from other mental states, while at the same time it is denied to be unique and irresolvable.

THOMAS REID.[24] [1710-96.]

Reid’s Ethical views are given in his Essays on the Active Powers of the Mind.

ESSAY III., entitled THE PRINCIPLES OF ACTION, contains (Part III.) a disquisition on the Rational Principles of Action as opposed to what Reid calls respectively Mechanical Principles (Instinct, Habit), and Animal Principles (Appetites, Desires, Affections).

The Rational Principles of Action are Prudence, or regard to our own good on the whole, and Duty, which, however, he does not define by the antithetical circumstance—­the ‘good of others.’  The notion of Duty, he says, is too simple for logical definition, and can only be explained by synonymes—­what we ought to do; what is fair and honest; what is approvable; the professed rule of men’s conduct; what all men praise; the laudable in itself, though no man praise it.

Duty, he says, cannot be resolved into Interest.  The language of mankind makes the two distinct.  Disregard of our interest is folly; of honour, baseness.  Honour is more than mere reputation, for it keeps us right when we are not seen.  This principle of Honour (so-called by men of rank) is, in vulgar phrase, honesty, probity, virtue, conscience; in philosophical language, the moral sense, the moral faculty, rectitude.

The principle is universal in men grown up to years of understanding.  Such a testimony as Hume’s may be held decisive on the reality of moral distinctions.  The ancient world recognized it in the leading terms, honestum and utile, &c.

The abstract notion of Duty is a relation between the action and the agent.  It must be voluntary, and within the power of the agent.  The opinion (or intention) of the agent gives the act its moral quality.