The Elements of Moral Science (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER SECOND CONSCIENCE, OR THE MORAL SENSE. SECTION 1 IS THERE A CONSCIENCE.' By consciem-o, or the moral sense, is meant, that faculty by which we discern the moral quality of actions, and by which we are capable of certain affections in respect to this quality. By faculty, is meant any particular part of our constitution, by which we become affected by the various qualities and relations of beings around us. Thus, by taste, we are conscious of the existence of beauty and deformity; by perception, we acquire a knowledge of the existence and quahties of the material world. And, in general, if we discern any quality in the universe, or produce or suffer any change, it seems almost a truism to say, that we have a faculty, or power, for so doing. A man who sees, must have eyes, or the faculty for seeing; and if he have not eyes, this is considered a sufficient reason why he should not see. And thus, it is universally admitted, that there may be a thousand qualities in nature, of which we have no knowledge, for the simple reason, that we have not been created with the faculties for discerning them. There is a world without us, and a world within us, which exactly correspond to each other. Unless both exist, we can never be conscious of the existence of either. Now, that we do actually observe a moral quality in the actions of men, must, I think, be admitted. Every human being is conscious, that, from childhood, he has observed it We do not say, that all men discern this quality withequal accuracy, any more than that they all see v ith equal distinctness . but we say, that all men perceive it in some actions; and that there is a multitude of cases in which their perceptions of it will be found universally to agree. And, moreover, this quality, and the feelin...