We shall find the views of Reid substantially adopted, and a little more closely and concisely argued, by Stewart.

DUGALD STEWART. [1753-1828.]

In his ‘Essays on the Active Powers of the Mind,’ Stewart introduces the Moral Faculty in the same way as Reid.  BOOK SECOND is entitled OUR RATIONAL AND GOVERNING PRINCIPLES OF ACTION.  Chapter I., on Prudence or Self-love, is unimportant for our present purpose, consisting of some desultory remarks on the connexion of happiness with steadiness of purpose, and on the meanings of the words ‘self-love’ and ‘selfishness.’

Chapter II. is on the Moral Faculty, and is intended to show that it is an original principle of the mind.  He first replies to the theory that identifies Morality with Prudence, or Self-love.  His first argument is the existence in all languages of different words for duty and for interest.  Secondly, The emotions arising from, the contemplation of right and wrong are different from those produced by a regard to our own happiness.  Thirdly, although in most instances a sense of duty, and an enlightened regard to our own happiness, would suggest to us the same line of conduct, yet this truth is not obvious to mankind generally, who are incapable of appreciating enlarged views and remote consequences.  He repeats the common remark, that we secure our happiness best by not looking to it as tho one primary end.  Fourthly, moral judgments appear in children, long before they can form the general notion of happiness.  His examples of this position, however, have exclusive reference to the sentiment of pity, which all moralists regard as a primitive feeling, while few admit it to be the same as the moral sense.

He then takes notice of the Association Theory of Hartley, Paley, and others, which he admits to be a great refinement of the old selfish system, and an answer to one of his arguments.  He maintains, nevertheless, that the others are untouched by it, and more especially the third, referring to the amount of experience and reflection necessary to discover the tendency of virtue to promote our happiness, which is inconsistent with the early period when our moral judgments appear. [It is singular that he should not have remarked that the moral judgments of that early age, if we except what springs from the impulses of pity, are wholly communicated by others.] He quotes Paley’s reasoning against the Moral Sense, and declares that he has as completely mis-stated the issue, as if one were to contend that because we are not born with the knowledge of light and colours, therefore the sense of seeing is not an original part of the frame. [It would be easy to retort that all that Paley’s case demanded was the same power of discrimination in moral judgments, as the power of discriminating light and dark belonging to our sense of sight.]