tendency to compel the rest to fall in with that.' But so much the more obvious is it, that every man must seek a standard satisfying to his own Reason, and act upon that. This Dr. Bain practically admits in the quotation last given, and Mr. Mill has powerfully argued for such unrestrained freedom of thought, in his work on 'Liberty.' Such a standard, if found, may lead to a doctrine of righteous disobedience to external authority, and a reversal of earlier practice. 10. The theory must fall back on utility as the basis of personal assent to moral distinctions, and in doing so it owns the failure of its attempt to develop Conscience by means of authority. Either 'every separate intelligence' must find for itself a law of nature, marking off some actions as right, others as wrong, or it must continue under the trammels of authority. If the former, the failure is admitted; if the latter, the escape is not effected. Professor Bain admits that 'the grand difficulty' is to account for 'the self-formed or independent conscience,' 'where the individual is a law to himself.' 'But,' he adds, 'there is nothing very formidable in this apparent contradiction,' 'when the young mind is sufficiently advanced to be able to appreciate the motives, the utilities, or the sentiment that led to their imposition—the character of the conscience is entirely transformed; the motive power issues from a different quarter of the mental framework. Regard is now had to the intent and meaning of the law, and not to the mere fact of its being prescribed by some power.-Emotions, p. 288. The difficulty here seems much more formidable than Professor Bain allows. The situation of the theory is briefly this,-Utility is the basis of moral distinctions; but some limit must be assigned to the principle, for we do not make everything a moral rule that we consider useful. Utility made compulsory is the standard of morality; Morality is thus an institution of society; Conscience is an imitation of the Government of society; Conscience is first fear of authority, and then respect for it; but, 'even in the most unanimous notions of mankind, there can be no such thing as a standard overriding the judgment of every separate intelligence;' the individual must therefore emancipate himself from authority, in order to be 'a law to himself;' to this end he must recognise the intent and meaning of the law; for this purpose he must fall back on Utility. It is not, however, all Utility, but only Utility made compulsory, which affords the basis of morals, and it is Society which determines what shall be made compulsory. How can every separate intelligence emancipate itself? How can it find to its own satisfaction a rule of life so essentially superior to the authority of Society, as to warrant independent action in opposition to the teaching of Society? CHAPTER IV. DUTY OR OBLIGATION. (UTILITARIAN THEORY.) 1. On a Utilitarian Theory, the problem concerning moral obligation wears this form :-If tendency to produce happiness determine the rightness of an action, how can we rise above the agreeable and desirable to find philosophic warrant for a doctrine of personal obligation? Utilitarianism meets its last and severest test in the attempt to distinguish between the desirable, which is the optional; and the dutiful, which is the imperative. 2. That happiness is by our nature desirable, is a fact which neither constitutes a law of personal obligation, nor obviates the necessity for having one. It cannot constitute a law of action, for the desirable has power only to attract, not to command. Besides, the desirable may often be the unattainable. The dutiful is not only the possible, but the binding. Neither can the desirability of happiness obviate the necessity for a law of obligation in the guidance of life. All pleasures are desirable, but all cannot be enjoyed at once; of pleasures, some are higher in quality, some lower, but the higher cannot always be preferred to the lower, therefore the quality of pleasure does not of itself afford a sufficient rule for selection, If man must sometimes surrender a higher enjoyment for a lower, and yet rigidly restrict lower pleasures for the sake of K higher attainment and action, we need to discover the ground of these necessities. Analysis discovers a physical necessity, since man must eat, as well as think; rest, as well as work; and an intellectual necessity, since man must concentrate his attention in order successfully to guide his efforts, and must therefore do some things, and leave others unattempted; but, within the possibilities of human effort, there is still another necessity, since of the things which a man can do, he recognises some as binding upon him in a sense in which others are not, and this is moral necessity. If, to perform the high functions of his life, he must deny himself some pleasures; and if, as a member of society, he must surrender his own pleasure for the good of others, there is a law of Self-denial and there is a law of Benevolence. Utilitarianism must, therefore, supply a basis of obligation in order to make good its claims as a Philosophy of Morals. 3. The extreme difficulty of discovering a basis for moral obligation under this theory has led to great diversity of opinion among its upholders. Bentham makes the cleanest cut through the difficulty by simply denying that there is such a thing as duty. It is, in fact, very idle to talk about duties; the word itself has in it something disagreeable and repulsive.'—Deontology, I. 10. 'The talisman of arrogance, indolence, and ignorance, is to be found in a single word, an authoritative imposture. . . . It is the word "ought," "ought or ought not," as circumstances may be. . . . If the use of the word be admissible at all, it "ought" to be banished from the vocabulary of morals.'—Ib. pp. 31, 32. And yet, he has not advanced thirty pages, before we find the following,-'Every pleasure is prima facie good, and ought to be pursued. Every pain is a prima facie evil, and ought to be avoided.'-Ib. p. 59. This post. humous work-Deontology-is so unguarded as to warrant the opinion that Bentham's memory would have been more honoured by withholding it from publication. ... 4. Mr. Charles Darwin attempts to surmount the difficulty by reducing its dimensions. The imperious word ought seems merely to imply the consciousness of the existence of a persistent instinct, either innate or partly acquired, serving him (man) as a guide, though liable to be disobeyed. We hardly use the word ought in a metaphorical sense when we say hounds ought to hunt, pointers to point, and retrievers to retrieve their game. If they fail thus to act, they fail in their duty, and act wrongly.'-The Descent of Man,- Moral Sense,' I. p. 92. The quotation is preceded by these words,—' Thus at last man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his more persistent instincts.' And this quotation is preceded, two pages earlier, by these words,-"The wish for another man's property is, perhaps, as persistent a desire as any that can be named,' I. p. 90. Neither a good morality nor a doctrine of personal obligation can rest on this basis. 5. Professor Bain meets the difficulty by making external authority the source of personal obligation, and restricting obligation to the class of actions enforced by the sanction of punishment.'—Emotions, p. 254. This, at one sweep, cuts off from the area of personal obligation the whole class of right actions. When a man does his duty, he escapes punishment; to assert anything more is to obliterate the radical distinction between duty and merit.'-Emotions, p. 292. On the contrary, to assert the duty of right actions is to preserve this distinction, for duty binds to the performance of an action, merit belongs to the person on account of having fulfilled his duty. But to restrict moral obligation to the avoidance of wrong actions, to say that it involves only restraint upon mean and cruel deeds, but does not make noble and beneficent deeds binding upon men,—is to give up the grandest part of morality, and to confess failure at a vital point in the theory. For a Utilitarian theory there is the further disadvantage of a surrender of its claims as a theory of benevolence, -in this form it ceases to be a theory inculcating 'the greatest |