part and fulfilment in the higher world. To leave this element of our nature out of account, or by vain shifts to elude its requirements, stamps any system that assumes to be a philosophy of the spirit as utterly naught. It leaves the main questionthe great problem which is inscribed on every heart-unsolved. It offers me everything by which I may move the invisible world, casting beneath my feet its gigantic terrors, its inexorable fate, and the roar of Acheron, except- σTW, the stand ing-point. That standing-point conscience denies us. What other power shall restore it? There is another power that can restore it, but the mention of that is rejected as folly. How melancholy to find Richter writing to his son Max, who had adopted evangelical views, though possibly in too melancholy and mystical a form, in the following terms:-'In all the conversations of Christ there is not a single word of the doctrine of all souls falling at the same time with Adam, or of satisfaction for sin. **** There is no other revelation than the ever continuing. Our whole orthodoxy, like catholicism itself, first centered in the Evangelists, and every century opens and produces new views.' We forbear commenting on this; and will add only one other thought. This system, which has amongst our own writers no mean apostles, is not only narrow, and insufficient for man, but it practises a fatal imposture on him. It comes arrayed in charms that are not its own. It walks in a borrowed light; its vesture and arms are stolen from the truth which it despises. It comes forth a Venus in the panoply of Minerva, but cannot stand the assault of a Diomede. As it was in the third century, so is it now. Philosophy robes herself in the spoils of her rival; yea, often assumes that rival's name, and appropriates her watchwords, and usurps her honours. Nor is it only the elevated disquisitions, and views of truth, but even the characters and incidents that form the charm of such representations as Richter's, the virtues in which his heroes shine, the hopes that animate them, their labours and their joys; all these conceptions and creations, could have had no existence even in fancy, far less a feeble reflection in reality, had it not been for that very faith which is rejected. What had become of society had it been left to the teaching of Plato, Epictetus, and Antoninus? Could they have put to the rout the brutalities and pollutions of paganism? Could they have wrought such a * What would Justin Martyr, the contemporary of these last two-both the bitter opponents, and one the persecutor of that faith, in which his soul had found what Platonism could not give it-have thought of such a phenomenon as Richter, the son of a Christian pastor in the eighteenth century? transformation on a large portion of mankind, that, even in circles where truth's influence is chiefly external, such household joys and social friendships should flourish as diffuse their fragrance over the pages of Richter? That his sentimental philosophy then, or any other such, should profess to dispense with our faith, on whose noble stock it only thrives as a parasite, sharing its dews and sunshine, and extracting its juices, is an illusion and a robbery. The hour which beheld the ruin of the tree, would see the parasite fallen along with it. The existence and luxuriance of such parasites, indeed, are but proofs of the nobleness of the trunk to which they cling. The mock sun is not created by the refracting vapour alone, but owes its glory to the presence of the orb of day. When the vapour is dispersed, the mock sun vanishes, while the true pursues in silent majesty his career of joy and splendour. ART. VI. (1.) The Metaphysic of Ethics. By IMManuel Kant, Professor of Logic and Metaphysic in the University of Königsburg, &c. &c. &c. Translated out of the original German, with an Introduction and an Appendix. By J. W. SEMPLE, Advocate. 8vo. pp. cxviii., 378. Edinburgh, 1836. (2.) The Elements of Morality, including Polity. By WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D., Master of Trinity College, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge. 2 vols, pp. xxxii. 374, 401. London, 1845. (3.) Lectures on Systematic Morality, delivered in Lent Term, 1846. By W. WHEWELL, D.D. 8vo, p. 205. London, 1846. (4.) The Elements of Moral Science. By FRANCIS WAYLAND, D.D.,. President of Brown's University, and Professor of Moral Philosophy. 12mo, p. 381. Edinburgh, (reprinted) 1847. WHAT CAN I KNOW?-WHAT OUGHT I TO DO?-These questions form the two great problems, on the just solution of which the philosophy of human nature, and, we may add, no small measure of the well-being of man depends. By our great Creator we have been endowed with a capacity for thought and action; and he has placed us under a moral administration, by the principles and laws of which our whole active being is to be regulated. This is the constitution and order of our existence as God's creatures. We cannot alter it; we cannot go beyond it. To understand it, therefore, is a first-rate duty and an important advantage; and to do this we must find an answer solid and satisfactory to the two questions above proposed. When we shall have collected and classified all the phenomena of human thought, determined the laws and limits of human research, unfolded the springs and modes of human action, and ascertained the grounds of moral judgment so as to erect a just and final criterion of human conduct; we may say that we have completed the cycle of those sciences which have man, in his immaterial essence, for their object, and have compassed that knowledge of ourselves which, according to one poet, is our proper study,' and, according to another, is commended to us by a special message from Heaven.* The two questions above specified, though closely connected, are capable of being considered apart. We mean in the present article to confine ourselves to the second of them, which is also the more important. Of the works which we have placed at the head of this article we do not intend to offer any formal criticism. They all profess to throw light upon the question we have proposed for consideration, and we shall avail ourselves of the aid they afford as occasion may dictate. The first on our list is, in our esti mation, by much the most valuable; it comprises a transla tion, admirably executed, of Kant's Metaphysik der Sitten, and of portions of his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, with prolegomena, and an Appendix by the translator. Dr. Whewell's Elements of Morality is a work of a more practical character: it is an attempt to deduce, after the analogy of geometry, from certain axioms a whole system of moral rule-an attempt which is, in our judgment, founded on a misconception, and in which the author we think fails, but which has afforded occasion for a vast mass of exceedingly valuable writing upon the subject of Morals. The Lectures on Systematic Morality are designed to form a kind of Commentary on some parts' of the Ele ments; they contain explanations of some points treated of in that work, of the very serious defects' of which the author has become conscious. The work of Dr. Wayland embraces both theoretical and practical ethics; it is distinguished by much clearness of perception, shrewdness of observation, and sagacity in the application of principles to practice. 6 What ought I to do? To this a prompt and popular answer would be Your duty.' But, on consideration, it would be found that in reality this is no answer at all; it is a mere truism, and affirms nothing more than that we ought to do *The proper study of mankind is Man.'-Pope. what we ought. For Duty' means something which is owing; it is debitum, a debt; and as the verbought' expresses simply the relation of its subject to his debts or duties, to say that he ought to do his duty is only analogous to saying that he owes his debts. It is clear, therefore, that this answer will not suffice for anything but a mere evasion of the question. But though this is no answer to the question, it suggests a process of inquiry by which a satisfactory answer may be reached. Setting out from the undeniable truism that we ought to do our duty, the following questions naturally present themselves. To whom is duty due? or to whom do I owe to do what I ought to do?-By what is this duty determined?— Whence arises the obligation by which the performance of it is enforced? What is the law under which that obligation arises? And by what means is knowledge of what I am thus under obligation to do to be obtained? If a precise and complete answer can be secured to these questions, it is obvious that the question, What ought I to do? will, as a philosophical problem, be solved. I. To the first of these inquiries a short answer will suffice. We owe duty to all sentient beings with whom we sustain any relations. The proof of this lies in the fact that there is no sentient being known to us, and connected with us, to whom we do not feel that we have to render something which we class under the head of Duty. To ourselves certain things are felt to be due by us, such as self-preservation, self-respect, purity, &c.; to our fellow creatures we feel that we owe many duties, such as justice, kindness, relative affection, &c.; to our Creator we are sensible that such duties as reverence, gratitude, and obedience, are to be rendered by us; and even to the lower animals we feel that we owe the duties of compassion, carefulness, and such like. Under these four heads are included all sentient and intelligent being with which we have any relations; and to all the objects comprising these classes we feel that something is due by us. Here, then, we have an answer to the first question above proposed; an empirical answer, it is true, but so much the more appropriate, seeing the question itself respects a matter of fact. II. To the second question an answer no less direct and brief may be given. When it is asked, by what is my duty to the sentient and intelligent beings around me with which I have relations, determined, the answer at once suggests itself. By those relations which form the bond of connexion between the parties. The proof of this is simple. In the first place, it is on the fact of such relationship that duty depends; for if we destroy the relationship, the duty ceases. We do not owe something to all sentient and intelligent creation, with the existence of which we are acquainted; to the angels, for instance, we owe no duties, though they are beings of whose existence and agency we are fully aware; our obligations are due only to those beings with which we stand in some distinct and definable relation. As relationship, therefore, is the condition sine quâ non of duty, it follows that it is by this that our duties are determined. This appears still further from the consideration, that in proportion as our relations advance in number and nearness, in the same proportion do our duties advance in amount and urgency. The Being to whom our relations are the most numerous, and the most strict, is God; and it is to him, also, that our first and most imperative obligations are due. To our family connexions our relations are greater and more intimate than are our relations to those who are merely our friends, still more so than to the mass of our fellow-countrymen, still more so than to men in general, and still more so than to the lower animals. We have thus a progression of relations; and with this a series of corre sponding duties keeps up, pari passu. Now, as it is not the duty which precedes the relationship, but the relationship which precedes the duty, we must take the relationship as not only the measure of the duty, but as the element by which the duty is determined. Out of the relations, therefore, which we sustain to the sentient and intelligent world around us arise the duties. which we owe to it. pro III. When we come to the third of the questions above posed, a more complex problem awaits us, and one which has led, consequently, to no small variety in the solutions which have been proposed of it. Without an examination of some of the more important of these, it will be impossible satisfactorily to determine what answer we should give to the question. Before proceeding, however, to this examination, there is a distinction to which we must call the notice of our readers; one sufficiently obvious in itself, but to which we think due prominence has not been assigned by ethical writers. The distinc tion to which we refer is that between a motive and an obligation. Generically these two are identical; they both belong to the class of powers by which the will of man is influenced to action. But specifically they differ; the one being more comprehensive than the other, and consequently involving fewer ideas. Every obligation is a motive, but every motive is not an obligation. In the latter the idea of constraint is added to that of simple influence. We are moved to do what we incline to do; we are obliged to do what we cannot but do. |