THE Views in Theology will continue to be published semi-annually, in May and November, and be devoted chiefly, as heretofore, to discussion on the Doctrines of Religion. Four numbers will form a volume. Those who desire the work, will please to give notice to the publisher, at 148 Nassau-street. Ministers and theological students, of whatever denomination, who apply for it, will receive it without charge. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH'S VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY. THERE is perhaps no subject that has engaged the inquiries of the speculative, of which the views that have been adopted are more vague, inconsistent, and erroneous, than of the nature and operations of the mind. None of the theories that have been successively put forth respecting them, have merited the praise of entire agreement with experience and the admitted laws of our nature; most of them have both been grossly at variance with many of the obvious facts of consciousness, and inconsistent with themselves. The causes of the ill success of these inquiries have been as various perhaps as the mistakes and imperfections by which they are characterized. Errors have in many instances sprung from partial views of our nature, and a wish to explain all our mental phenomena by principles that are applicable only to portions of them in others, by treating the mind as subject to laws analogous to those of material substances. The mistakes of one set of speculators have driven their successors into an opposite class of errors; these again have given rise to other forms of false hypothe sis. It has been, however, a more fruitful source, perhaps, than all others, of misconception, that a large portion of the disquisitions on these subjects have related rather to the processes by which the mind arrives at the habits and laws of agency which characterize its maturity, than to the nature of its affections and modes of action in that state; have been employed in inquiring how its thoughts come to occur in such connections and combinations, and to be attended by such affections, rather than what the characteristics of the affections and perceptions themselves are which constitute the peculiar agencies of the various classes of mindsinquiries in which perceptions and emotions have often been treated as abstract products of external influences, rather than the legitimate operations of the intellect and heart. The errors and inconsistencies of these speculators have been more numerous and important, perhaps, in regard to our moral than our intellectual nature. Their theories on these subjects have related chiefly to the nature of virtue and vice, or moral good and evil-and to the origin of our apprehensions of them, and the peculiar affections with which they are regarded. Of the views that have been held on these subjects, the volume under notice exhibits a highly entertaining and instructive history. After a summary exhibition of the philosophy of Greece and Rome, and the early and middle ages of the christian church, the author presents a brief sketch of the theories successively of the principal modern writers on the subject, with, in several instances, an extended criticism on their doctrines, in the progress of which he has taken occasion to His remarks are distinexhibit his own peculiar views. guished by great facility and elegance of expression, acuteness, and impartiality ; and if not exempt in some instances from inconsistency and mistake, display in general an extent of knowledge, and depth and justness of views, that entitle him to a distinguished rank among those who have treated of this branch of our nature. Of modern moral theorists there are four classes: Hobbists regard virtue and vice as wholly conventional, the creatures of law and custom, and dependent for their being and nature on the will of lawgivers, and the habits of communities. Utilitarians exhibit the good and evil of actions as constituted by their influence on happiness, or tendency A third class believe them to be to promote or obstruct it. constituted solely by the will of God, or made what they are by the divine enactment simply. A fourth regard the natures and relations of those who exert them, and the beings whom they affect as the primary ground of their rectitude or wrongness and their tendency, and the reason of the divine legislation respecting them. These again differ in respect to the origin of the approving and disapproving affections which virtue and vice are accustomed to excite; some representing them as constitutional, and excited by the perception of the character of the actions which they respect; and others, as artificial or secondary-a product gradually formed from other affections, by the observation of the favourable or unfavourable influence of actions. The latter is the theory advocated in the volume under notice. Its import may be seen from the following passages: "The affections, desires, and emotions, having for their ultimate object the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents, which alone from the nature of their object, are coextensive with the whole of our active nature, are, according to the same philosophy, necessarily formed in every human mind by the transfer of feeling which is effected by the principle of association. Gratitude, pity, resentment, |