place, it is a fact that our moral sentiments are to a very great extent derived from tradition, while the approbation and disapprobation may have originally been wrongly applied.  The force of tradition he illustrates by supposing the case of a patriarchal family, and he cannot too strongly represent its strength in overcoming or at least struggling against natural feeling.  The authoritative precept of a superior may also make actions be approved or disapproved, not because they are directly perceived or even traditionally held to be beneficial or injurious, but solely because they are commanded or prohibited.  Lastly, he dwells upon the influence of superstition in perverting moral sentiment, finding, however, that it operates most strongly in the way of creating false virtues and false vices and crimes.

These circumstances, explaining the want of conformity in our moral sentiments to the real tendencies of actions, he next employs to account for discrepancies in moral sentiment between different communities.  Having given examples of such discrepancies, he supposes the case of two families, endowed with the rudimentary qualities mentioned at the beginning, but placed in different circumstances.  Under the influence of dissimilar physical conditions, and owing to the dissimilar personal idiosyncracies of the families, and especially of their chiefs, there will be left few points of complete analogy between them in the first generation, and in course of time they will become two races exceedingly unlike in moral sentiment, as in other respects.  He warns strongly against making moral generalizations except under analogous circumstances of knowledge and civilization.  Most men have the rudimentary feelings, but there is no end to the variety of their intensity and direction.  As a highest instance of discrepant moral sentiment, he cites the fact that, in our own country, a moral stigma is still attached to intellectual error by many people, and even by men of cultivation.

He now comes to the important question of the test or criterion that is to determine which of these diverse sentiments are right and which wrong, since they cannot all be right from the mere fact of their existence, or because they are felt by the subjects of them to be right, or believed to be in consonance with the injunctions of superiors, or to be held also by other people.  The foregoing review of the genesis of moral sentiments suggests a direct and simple answer.  As they arise from likings and dislikings of actions that cause, or tend to cause, pleasure and pain, the first thing is to see that the likings and dislikings are well founded.  Where this does not at once appear, examination of the real effects of actions must be resorted to; and, in dubious cases, men in general, when unprejudiced, allow this to be the natural test for applying moral approbation and disapprobation.  If, indeed, the end of moral sentiment is to promote or to prevent the actions, there can be no better way of attaining that end.  And, as a fact, almost all moralists virtually adopt it on occasion, though often unconsciously; the greatest happiness—­principle is denounced by its opponents as a mischievous doctrine.