suffering, perfection and defect, prosperity and adversity.

"Enjoyment and suffering are opposite conditions of a sentient nature.

"Perfection and defect are the opposite conditions of an improveable or progressive nature.

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Prosperity and adversity are the opposite conditions of things contingent, in which the most fortunate have not a choice."*

The fundamental law of morality is thus laid down by Dr. Ferguson. From the foregoing estimate we may venture to affirm, that the qualities of man's nature are of more moment than any of the circumstances in which men are placed; and that the first concern of a man is to consider what he himself is, not how he is situated.

"In stating a first principle of morality, however, it is not necessary to enumerate all the valuable qualities of human nature; it is sufficient to select some fundamental article, in itself important, and leading to the whole.

"With these conditions, a principle will serve our purpose the better for being expressed in few words, provided it brings into view that which is most essential, and that which is for ever to be kept in mind.

* Institutes, p. 139.

"Under this description we may venture to assume as a first principle of morality, that the greatest good competent to man's nature is the love of mankind.

"Benevolence, and the love of mankind, are terms nearly synonymous; but we prefer the latter in this place, as excluding pretensions to merit on account of any sentiment without an object, and as requiring at once all the efficacy of a good disposition towards those who are within its reach.

"The law of benevolence may be applied separately to mind, and to the external actions of men.

"In its applications to mind, it will lead us to enumerate the valuable qualities connected with it, whether as cause or effect; and it will lead us to complete the definition of virtue, or the description of a rational nature accomplished and happy.

"In its application to external actions, it will lead us to consider in what variety of external forms the same dispositions of mind may appear, and to mark out the tenor of conduct which the just will naturally hold."*

The "Principles of Moral and Political Science" is merely an enlargement of his Institutes.

* Institutes, p. 163.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

DR. PRICE.

REVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL QUESTIONS IN MORALS.

RICHARD PRICE was born at Tynton, Glamorganshire, in 1723, where his father, a dissenting clergyman, resided. He was placed at one of the dissenting academies in the south, under the care of his uncle, the Rev. Samuel Price. Mr. Price was chosen minister at Newington Green in 1757, in which year he published his "Review of the Principal Questions in Morals." He died in 1791.

Dr. Price's "Review of the Principal Questions in Morals" was a work of considerable po

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pularity some years ago; and the propriety of its arrangement, the clearness of its style, and the high sense of virtue and piety which runs through the whole of it, must ever entitle it to an attentive and careful perusal by the moral student.

In looking into our natures as moral agents, we recognise three distinct perceptions, which seem to constitute the elementary principles of morality; and these should always be carefully kept in view in all our reasonings on the subject. First, our conception of right and wrong; secondly, our perception of beauty and deformity; and thirdly, that which we express in common language, when we designate particular actions as of good or ill desert.

Some actions we immediately, and upon the spur of the moment, pronounce to be good, and others evil; some fit, and others unfit; while others are considered as possessing no particular moral obligation, and we accordingly call them by the term indifferent. The grand question then is, what is this power within us which thus authoritatively pronounces its decisions on the nature of these different kind of actions?

We have already illustrated the doctrine of a moral sense at considerable length; and slightly hinted at some of the leading objections which Dr.

Price advances against the existence of this faculty. His answer to the above question, What is that power within us which determines actions to be good or bad? is this, that this power is the understanding, and not a moral sense, and his principal reasons for this conclusion are the following.

1st, By the term sense we usually mean that power, (different from, and independent of the reasoning or judging power) which renders certain actions pleasing, and others displeasing, or those which are rendered indifferent to us. By our bodily construction we are so formed that the excitement of certain bodily organs never fails to produce certain ideas in our minds; and that in like manner, certain kinds of moral or immoral behaviour are invariably productive of pleasure or of pain. Had the advocates of this description of a moral sense merely meant it should stand for our moral powers generally, little or no objection could have been urged against its use in ethical inquiries; but it is obvious from the general tenor of the writings of the principal advocates of a moral sense, that they drew the analogy between it and our intellectual and physical powers too closely, and that the term moral sense is used by them, as indicative of a positive moral faculty, an implanted and arbitrary