II.—­As regards Ethical Psychology, the first question is determined by the remarks on the Standard.

On the second question, Free-will, Stewart maintains Liberty.

On the third question, he gives, like many others, an uncertain sound.  In his account of Pity, he recognizes three things, (1) a painful feeling, (2) a selfish desire to remove the cause of the uneasiness, (3) a disposition grounded on benevolent concern about the sufferer.  This is at best vague.  Equally so is what he states respecting the pleasures of sympathy and benevolence (Book II., Chapter VII.).  There is, he says, a pleasure attached to fellow-feeling, a disposition to accommodate our minds to others, wherever there is a benevolent affection; and, in all probability, the pleasure of sympathy is the pleasure of loving and of being beloved.  No definite proposition can be gathered from such loose allegations.

III.—­We have already abstracted his chapter on Happiness.

IV.—­On the Moral Code, he has nothing peculiar.

V.—­On the connexion with Religion, we have seen that he is strenuous in his antagonism to the doctrine of the dependence of morality on the will of God.  But, like other moralists of the same class, he is careful to add:—­’Although religion can with no propriety be considered as the sole foundation of morality, yet when we are convinced that God is infinitely good, and that he is the friend and protector of virtue, this belief affords the most powerful inducements to the practice of every branch of our duty.’  He has (Book III.) elaborately discussed the principles of Natural Religion, but, like Adam Smith, makes no reference to the Bible, or to Christianity.  He is disposed to assume the benevolence of the Deity, but considers that to affirm it positively is to go beyond our depth.

THOMAS BROWN. [1778-1820.]

Brown’s Ethical discussion commences in the 73rd of his Lectures.  He first criticises the multiplicity of expressions used in the statement of the fundamental question of morals—­’What is it that constitutes the action virtuous?’ ’What constitutes the moral obligation to perform certain actions?’ ’What constitutes the merit of the agent?’—­These have been considered questions essentially distinct, whereas they are the very same question.  There is at bottom but one emotion in the case, the emotion of approbation, or of disapprobation, of an agent acting in a certain way.

In answer then to the question as thus simplified, ’What is the ground of moral approbation and disapprobation?’ Brown answers—­a simple emotion of the mind, of which no farther explanation can be given than that we are so constituted.  Thus, without using the same term, he sides with the doctrine of the Innate Moral Sense.  He illustrates it by another elementary fact of the mind, involved in the conception of cause and effect on his theory of that relation—­the belief that the future will resemble the past.  Excepting a teleogical reference to the Supreme Benevolence of the Deity, he admits no farther search into the nature of the moral sentiment.