Deity has endowed me, I am urged to some of these actions, and am warned to forbear from others. "A principle of reflection or conscience," which Butler assures me I possess, informs me of their rectitude or pravity. Or "the innate practical principles," which Locke has presumed to question, define the duties, which God has imposed upon me, with infallible clearness and certainty.'

'These and other phrases,' he adds, 'are various but equivalent expressions for one and the same hypothesis. The only observable difference between these various expressions consists in this; that some denote sentiments which are excited by human actions, whilst others denote the commands to which those sentiments are the index.'1

In order to test the soundness of these conflicting theories, Austin, who is a strong advocate for the theory of utility, adopts the following imaginary case :-He supposes a solitary savage-a child abandoned in the wilderness immediately after its birth, and growing to the age of manhood in estrangement from human society. He says, 'I imagine that the savage, as he wanders in search of prey, meets, for the first time in his life, with a man. This man is a hunter, and is carrying a deer which he has killed. The savage pounces upon it. The hunter holds it fast. And, in order that he may remove this obstacle to the satisfaction of his gnawing hunger, the savage seizes a stone, and knocks the hunter on the head. Again: Shortly after, he meets with a second hunter, whom he also knocks on the head. But, in this instance, he is not the aggressor. He is attacked, beaten, wounded, with

1 Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 147.

out the shadow of a provocation; and, to prevent a deadly blow which is aimed at his own head, he kills the wanton assailant." Austin applies these several theories to the two positions. I leave the reader to do it for himself, and independently to determine whether or not the savage would, in either case, experience a sense of wrong-doing; and, also, whether or not the case, as put, is defective in this, that the savage is admittedly pressed by "gnawing hunger"; and, further, whether the case is not useless as a means of arriving at any truth. If such a being as is described could exist, is it not as unreasonable to attempt to deduce from his conduct the natural principles of man, as it would be to attempt to evolve them from the vagaries of a madman?

"The father of Caius Toranius had been proscribed by the Triumvirate. Caius Toranius, coming over to the interests of that party, discovered to the officers, who were in pursuit of his father's life, the place where he concealed himself, and gave them withal a description by which they might distinguish his person when they found him. The old man, more anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son than about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to enquire of the officers who seized him whether his son was well, whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of his generals. "That son," replied one of the officers, "so dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us; by his information thou art apprehended, and diest." The officer, with this, struck a poignard to his heart, and the unhappy parent fell, not so much affected by his fate as by the means to which he owed it."2

1 Austin, vol. i. p. 149.

2 Valer. Max., lib. ix., c. 11.

Paley, who quotes this, says,-'Now the question is, whether, if this story were related to the wild boy caught some years ago in the woods of Hanover, or to a savage without experience, and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, and, consequently, under no possible influence. of example, authority, education, sympathy, or habit,— whether, I say, such an one would feel, upon the relation, any degree of that sentiment of disapprobation of Toranius' conduct which we feel, or not?

'Those who maintain the existence of a moral sense; of innate maxims; of a natural conscience; that the love of virtue and hatred of vice are instinctive; or the perception of right and wrong intuitive,-all which are only different ways of expressing the same opinion,— affirm that he would.

"Those who deny the existence of a moral sense, affirm that he would not. And upon this issue is joined.

'As the experiment has never been made, and, from the difficulty of procuring a subject—not to mention the impossibility of proposing the question to him, if we had one—is never likely to be made, what would be the event, can only be judged of from probable

reasons.

They who contend for the affirmative, observe, that we approve examples of generosity, gratitude, fidelity, &c., and condemn the contrary, instantly, without deliberation, without having any interest of our own concerned in them, oft-times without being conscious of, or able to give any reason for, our approbation; that this approbation is uniform and universal, the 1 Moral and Political Philosophy, bk. 1, ch. 5.

same sorts of conduct being approved or disapproved in all ages and countries of the world;-circumstances, say they, which strongly indicate the operation of an instinct, or moral sense.

'On the other hand, answers have been given to most of these arguments by the patrons of the opposite system. And, first, as to the uniformity above alleged, they controvert the fact. They remark, from authentic accounts of historians and travellers, that there is scarcely a single vice which, in some age or country of the world, has not been countenanced by public opinion; that in one country it is esteemed an office of piety in children to sustain their aged parents, in another to despatch them out of the way; that suicide, which, in one age of the world has been heroism, is in another felony; that theft, which is punished by most laws, by the laws of Sparta was not unfrequently rewarded; that the promiscuous commerce of the sexes, although condemned by the regulations and censure of all civilized nations, is practised by the savages of the tropical regions without reserve, compunction, or disgrace; that crimes, of which it is no longer permitted us even to speak, have had their advocates amongst the sages of very renowned times; that, if an inhabitant of the polished nations of Europe be delighted with the appearance, wherever he meets with it, of happiness, tranquillity, and comfort, a wild American is no less. diverted with the writhings and contortions of a victim at the stake; that in the above instances, and perhaps in most others, moral approbation follows the fashions and institutions of the country we live in, which fashions also and institutions themselves have grown out of the exigencies-the climate, situation, or local circumstances

-of the country; or have been set up by the authority of an arbitrary chieftain, or the unaccountable caprice of the multitude :-all which, they observe, looks very little like the steady hand and indelible characters of Nature.'

After citing other objections, he says,- Upon the whole, it seems to me, either that there exist no such instincts as compose what is called the moral sense, or that they are not now to be distinguished from prejudices and habits, on which account they cannot be depended upon in moral reasoning. I mean, that it is not a safe way of arguing, to assume certain principles as so many dictates, impulses, and instincts of Nature, and then to draw conclusions from these principles as to the rectitude or wrongness of actions, independent of the tendency of such actions, or of any other consideration whatever.'

Both theories appear defective in this: each assumes that the will of God respecting any matter may be immediately ascertained by any individual. The theory of a moral sense assumes that no peculiarity of circumstances can affect human conviction as to what is right and what wrong. The theory of utility, on the other hand, declares right to be simple conformity to the exigencies of existing circumstances. The former theory, in fact, denies the advantage of any moral instruction. The latter repudiates the teaching of experience. The advocates of the former reject the possibility of ignorance. The advocates of the latter accept the present state of things as the criterion. Is it not possible to agree in part with each, in full with neither? Ascribing the origin of man to God, is it unreasonable to suppose that man has by nature a latent