pound of yes and no. We cannot be conscious both of communion with God and of non-communion with Him. And, on Dr Schenkel's own showing, the evidence for immediate communion with Him is but small. The consciousness of moral law he affirms to be consciousness of the want or need of communion with God, not the consciousness of enjoying it. But is conscience ever independent of the consciousness of moral law? If not, it can never, according to the hypothesis, be a consciousness of God. If it be independent thereof, the fact would require to be better proved than by the misinterpretation of a few texts of Scripture. Solidly proved it never, I believe, can be. A conscience not conscious of a moral law is simply no conscience at all.

NOTE XXVII., page 221.

CHALMERS AND ERSKINE ON THE ARGUMENT
FROM CONSCIENCE.

The moral argument was, as was to be expected, a very favourite one with Dr Chalmers, and his way of stating it was as remarkable for its simplicity and directness as for its eloquence. "Had God," he asks, "been an unrighteous Being Himself, would He have given to the obviously superior faculty in man so distinct and authoritative a voice on the side of righteousness? Would He have so constructed the creatures of our species as to have planted in every breast a reclaiming witness against Himself? Would He have thus inscribed on the tablet of every heart the sentence of His own condemnation; and is this not just as likely, as that

He should have inscribed it in written characters on the forehead of each individual? Would He so have fashioned the workmanship of His own hands; or, if a God of cruelty, injustice, and falsehood, would He have placed in the station of master and judge that faculty which, felt to be the highest in our nature, would prompt a generous and high-minded revolt of all our sentiments against the Being who formed us? From a God possessed of such characteristics, we should surely have expected a differently-moulded humanity; or, in other words, from the actual constitution of man, from the testimonies on the side of all righteousness, given by the vicegerent within the heart, do we infer the righteousness of the Sovereign who placed it there."-'Natural Theology,' vol. i. pp. 323, 324. This argument of Dr Chalmers, like all other arguments from conscience, implies the soundness of the reasoning by which God has been attempted to be shown to be the intelligent cause or author of the universe; and, on that perfectly legitimate presupposition, it seems to me as irresistible as it is simple. An intelligent but unrighteous God would never have made a creature better than himself and endowed with admiration of what is most opposite to himself, the reverse and counterpart of his own character.

The argument as stated by the late Mr Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, is no less simple and direct: "When I attentively consider what is going on in my conscience, the chief thing forced on my notice is, that I find myself face to face with a purpose-not my own, for I am often conscious of resisting it—but which dominates me and makes itself felt as ever present, as the very root and reason of my being. This consciousness of a purpose concerning me that I should

be a good man-right, true, and unselfish-is the first firm footing I have in the region of religious thought: for I cannot dissociate the idea of a purpose from that of a Purposer, and I cannot but identify this Purposer with the Author of my being and the Being of all beings; and further, I cannot but regard His purpose towards me as the unmistakable indication of His own character." The Spiritual Order, and other Papers,' pp. 47, 48.

NOTE XXVIII., page 225.

ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF
CONSCIENCE.

I have indicated to some extent my reasons for regarding this theory as unsatisfactory in an article entitled "Associationism and the Origin of Moral Ideas," in 'Mind,' No. III. (July 1876). In the treatise of M. Carrau, ‘La Morale Utilitaire,' and in that of M. Guyau, 'La Morale Anglaise,' the various forms of the theory are examined with fairness and penetration.

NOTE XXIX., page 229.

CHALMERS AND BAIN ON THE PLEASURE OF
MALEVOLENCE.

Dr Chalmers devotes a chapter of his 'Natural Theology' to the illustration of "the inherent pleasure of the virtuous, and misery of the vicious affections." I do not think the psychological doctrine of that chapter unexcep

tionable; but, at the same time, I cannot understand on what ground Prof. Bain imagines that it "implies doubts as to the genuineness of the pleasures of malevolence," and virtually denies that "the feeling of gratified vengeance is a real and indisputable pleasure."-See 'Emotions and the Will,' pp. 187-189. The very passage which Prof. Bain quotes is quite inconsistent with this view. It is as follows: "The most ordinary observer of his own feelings, however incapable of analysis, must be sensible, even at the moment of wreaking the full indulgence of his resentment on the man who has provoked or injured him, that all is not perfect within; but that in this, and indeed in every other malignant feeling, there is a sore burden of disquietude, an unhappiness tumultuating in the heart, and visibly pictured in the countenance. The ferocious tyrant who has only to issue forth his mandate, and strike dead at pleasure the victim of his wrath, with any circumstance too of barbaric caprice and cruelty which his fancy, in the very waywardness of passion unrestrained and power unbounded, might suggest to him— he may be said through life to have experienced a thousand gratifications, in the solaced rage and revenge which, though ever breaking forth on some new subject, he can appease again every day of his life by some new execution. But we mistake it if we think otherwise than that, in spite of these distinct and very numerous, nay, daily gratifications, if he so choose, it is not a life of fierce internal agony notwithstanding."

The sentence which precedes these words leaves no doubt that Prof. Bain's interpretation of them is incorrect. "True, it is inseparable from the very nature of a desire, that there must be some enjoyment or other at the time of its gratification; but, in the case of these

evil affections, it is not unmixed enjoyment." The following passage is, however, still more explicit: "There is a certain species of enjoyment common to all our affections. It were a contradiction in terms to affirm otherwise; for it were tantamount to saying, that an affection may be gratified without the actual experience of a gratification. There must be some sensation or other of happiness at the time when a man attains that which he is seeking for; and if it be not a positive sensation of pleasure, it will at least be the sensation of a relief from pain, as when one meets with the opportunity of wreaking upon its object that indignation which had long kept his heart in a tumult of disquietude. We therefore would mistake the matter if we thought that a state even of thorough and unqualified wickedness was exclusive of all enjoyment, for even the vicious affections must share in that enjoyment which inseparably attaches to every affection at the moment of its indulgence. And thus it is that even in the veriest Pandemonium might there be lurid gleams of ecstasy and shouts of fiendish exultation-the merriment of desperadoes in crime, who send forth the outcries of their spiteful and savage delight when some deep-laid villany has triumphed, or when, in some dire perpetration of revenge, they have given full satisfaction and discharge to the malignity of their accursed nature. The assertion, therefore, may be taken too generally, when it is stated that there is no enjoyment whatever in the veriest hell of assembled outcasts; for even there, might there be many separate and specific gratifications. And we must abstract the pleasure essentially involved in every affection at the instant of its indulgence, and which cannot possibly be disjoined from it, ere we see clearly and dis