be the more natural state of man; and, therefore, adds this qualifying parenthesis, If you are pleased to call such a condition natural.

But it ought to be observed, That if the premises of his argument be weakened by this clause, the same weakness must be communicated to the conclusion; and the conclusion, according to the rules of good reasoning, ought to be, That justice is an artificial virtue, if you be pleased to call it artificial.

3. It were likewise to be wished, that Mr. Hume had shown from fact, that there ever did exist such a state of man as that which he calls his more natural state. It is a state wherein a man borrows a sum of money, on the condition that he is to restore it in a few days; yet when the time of payment comes, his obligation to repay what he borrowed is perfectly unintelligible and sophistical. It would have been proper to have given at least a single instance of some tribe of the human race that was found to be in this natural state. If no such instance can be given, it is probably a state merely imaginary; like that state, which some have imagined, wherein men were Ouran Outangs, or wherein they were fishes with tails.

Indeed, such a state seems impossible. That a man should lend without any conception of his having a right to be repaid, or that a man should borrow on the condition of paying in a few days, and yet have no conception of his obligation, seems to me to involve a contradiction.

I grant that a humane man may lend without any expectation of being repaid; but that he should lend without any conception of a right to be repaid, is a contradiction. In like manner, a fraudulent man may borrow without an intention of paying back; but that he should borrow, while an obligation to repay is perfectly unintelligible to him, this is a contradiction.

The same author in his Enquiry into the Principles of Morals, sect. 3, treating of the same subject, has the following note:

""Tis evident that the will or consent alone never transfers property, nor causes the obligation of a promise, (for the same reasoning extends to both), but the will must be expressed by words or signs, in order to impose a tie upon any man. The expression being once brought in as subservient to the will, soon becomes the principal part of the promise; nor will a man be less bound by his word, though he secretly give a different direction to his intention, and withhold the assent of his mind. But though the expression makes, on most occasions, the whole of the promise, yet it does not always so; and one who should make use of any expression, of which he knows not the meaning, and which he uses without any sense of the consequences, would not certainly be bound by it. Nay, though he knows its meaning; yet if he uses it in jest only, and with such signs as show evidently he has no serious intention of binding himself, he would not be under any obligation of performance; but it is necessary that the words be a perfect expression of the will without any contrary signs. Nay, even this we must not carry so far as to imagine, that one whom, from our quickness of understanding, we conjecture to have an intention of deceiving us, is not bound by his expression or verbal promise, if we accept of it, but must limit this conclusion to those cases, where the signs are of a different nature from those of deceit. All these contradictions are easily accounted for, if justice arises entirely from its usefulness to society, but will never be explained on any other hypothesis."

Here we have the opinion of this great moralist and acute metaphysician, that the principles of honesty and fidelity are at bottom a bundle of contradictions. This is one part of his moral system which, I cannot help

thinking, borders upon licentiousness. It surely tends to give a very unfavourable notion of that cardinal virtue, without which no man has a title to be called an honest man. What regard can a man pay to the virtue of fidelity, who believes that its essential rules contradict each other? Can a man be bound by contradictory rules of conduct? No more, surely, than he can be bound to believe contradictory principles.

He tells us, "That all these contradictions are easily accounted for, if justice arises entirely from its usefulness to society, but will never be explained upon any other hypothesis."

I know not indeed what is meant by accounting for contradictions. or explaining them. I apprehend, that no hypothesis can make that which is a contradiction to be no contradiction. However, without attempting to account for these contradictions upon his own hypothesis, he pronounces, in a decisive tone, that they will never be explained upon any other hypothesis.

What if it shall appear, that the contradictions mentioned in this paragraph do all take their rise from two capital mistakes the author has made with regard to the nature of promises and contracts; and if, when these are corrected, there shall not appear a shadow of contradiction in the cases put by him?

The first mistake is, That a promise is some kind of will, consent, or intention, which may be expressed, or may not be expressed. This is to mistake the nature of a promise: For no will, no consent or intention, that is not expressed, is a promise. A promise, being a social transaction between two parties, without being expressed, can have no existence.

Another capital mistake that runs through the passage cited is, That this will, consent, or intention, which makes a promise, is a will or intention to perform what we promise. Every man knows that there may be a fraudulent promise made without intention of performing. But the intention to perform the promise, or not to perform it, whether the intention be known to the other party or not, makes no part of the promise; it is a solitary act of the mind, and can neither constitute nor dissolve an obligation. What makes a promise is, that it be expressed to the other party with understanding, and with an intention to become bound, and that it be accepted by him.

Carrying these remarks along with us, let us review the passage cited. First, He observes, that the will or consent alone does not cause the obligation of a promise, but it must be expressed.

I answer: The will not expressed is not a promise: and is it a contradiction that that which is not a promise should not cause the obligation of a promise? He goes on: The expression being once brought in as subservient to the will, soon becomes a principal part of the promise. Here it is supposed, that the expression was not originally a constituent part of the promise, but it soon becomes such. It is brought in to aid and be subservient to the promise which was made before by the will. If Mr. Hume had considered, that it is the expression accompanied with understanding and will to become bound that constitutes a promise, he would never have said, that the expression soon becomes a part, and is brought in as subservient.

He adds, Nor will a man be less bound by his word, though he secretly give a different direction to his intention, and withholds the assent of his mind.

The case here put needs some explication. Either it means, that the man knowingly and voluntarily gives his word, without any intention of

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giving his word, or that he gives it without the intention of keeping it,
and performing what he promises. The last of these is indeed a possible
But the intention of
case, and is, I apprehend, what Mr. Hume means.
keeping his promise is no part of the promise, nor does it in the least
affect the obligation of it, as we have often observed.

If the author meant that the man may knowingly and voluntarily give his word, without the intention of giving his word, this is impossible: For such is the nature of all social acts of the mind. that, as they cannot be without being expressed, so they cannot be expressed knowingly and willingly, but they must be. If a man puts a question knowingly and willingly, it is impossible that he should at the same ime will not to put it. If he gives a command knowingly and willingly, it is impossible that he should at the same time will not to give it. We cannot have contrary wills at the same time. And, in like manner, if a man knowingly and willingly becomes bound by a promise, it is impossible that he should at the same time will not to be bound.

To suppose, therefore, that when a man knowingly and willingly gives his word, he withholds that will and intention which makes a promise, is indeed a contradiction; but the contradiction is not in the nature of the promise, but in the case supposed by Mr. Hume.

He adds, though the expression, for the most part, makes the whole of the promise, it does not always so.

I answer, That the expression, if it is not accompanied with understanding, and will to engage, never makes a promise. The author here assumes a postulate which nobody ever granted, and which can only be grounded on the impossible supposition made in the former sentence. And as there can be no promise without knowledge and will to engage, is it marvellous that words which are not understood, or words spoken in jest, and without any intention to become bound, should not have the effect of a promise?

The last case put by Mr. Hume is that of a man who promises fraudulently with an intention not to perform, and whose fraudulent intention is discovered by the other party, who, notwithstanding, accepts the promise. He is bound, says Mr. Hume, by his verbal promise. Undoubtedly he is bound, because an intention not to perform the promise, whether known to the other party or not, makes no part of the promise, nor affects its obligation, as has been repeatedly observed.

From what has been said, I think it evident, that, to one who attends to the nature of a promise or contract, there is not the least appearance of contradiction in the principles of morality relating to contracts.

It would indeed appear wonderful that such a man as Mr. Hume should have imposed upon himself in so plain a matter, if we did not see frequent instances of ingenious men, whose zeal in supporting a favourite hypothesis darkens their understanding, and hinders them from seeing what is before their eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

THAT MORAL APPROBATION IMPLIES A REAL JUDGMENT.

THE approbation of good actions, and disapprobation of bad, are so familiar to every man come to years of understanding, that it seems strange there should be any dispute about their nature.

Whether we reflect upon our own conduct, or attend to the conduct of

others with whom we live, or of whom we hear or read, we cannot help approving of some things, disapproving of others, and regarding many with perfect indifference.

These operations of our minds we are conscious of every day and almost every hour we live. Men of ripe understanding are capable of reflecting upon them, and of attending to what passes in their own thoughts on such occasions; yet, for half a century, it has been a serious dispute among philosophers, what this approbation and disapprobation is; Whether there be a real judgment included in it, which, like all other judgments, must be true or false; or, Whether it include no more but some agreeable or uneasy feeling, in the person who approves or disapproves.

Mr. Hume observes very justly, that this is a controversy started of late. Before the modern system of ideas and impressions was introduced, nothing could have appeared more absurd than to say, that when I condemn a man for what he has done, I pass no judgment at all about the man, but only express some uneasy feeling in myself.

Nor did the new system produce this discovery at once, but gradually, by several steps, according as its consequences were more accurately traced, and its spirit more thoroughly imbibed by successive philosophers.

Des Cartes and Mr. Locke went no farther than to maintain, that the secondary qualities of body, heat and cold, sound, colour, taste, and smell, which we perceive and judge to be in the external object, are mere feelings or sensations in our minds, there being nothing in bodies themselves to which these names can be applied; and that the office of the external senses is not to judge of external things, but only to give us ideas or sensations, from which we are by reasoning to deduce the existence of a material world without us, as well as we can.

Arthur Collier and Bishop Berkeley discovered, from the same principles, that the primary as well as the secondary qualities of bodies, such as extension, figure, solidity, motion, are only sensations in our minds; and therefore, that there is no material world without us at all.

The same philosophy, when it came to be applied to matters of taste, discovered that beauty and deformity are not any thing in the objects to which men, from the beginning of the world ascribed them, but certain feelings in the mind of the spectator.

The next step was an easy consequence from all the preceding, that moral approbation and disapprobation are not judgment, which must be true or false, but barely agreeable and uneasy feelings or sensations.

Mr. Hume made the last step in this progress, and crowned the system by what he calls his hypothesis, to wit, that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive than of the cogitative part of our nature.

Beyond this I think no man can go in this track; sensation or feeling is all; and what is left to the cogitative part of our nature, I am not able to comprehend.

I have had occasion to consider each of these paradoxes, excepting that which relates to morals, in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man ; and, though they be strictly connected with each other, and with the system which has produced them, I have attempted to show that they are inconsistent with just notions of our intellectual powers, no less than they are with the common sense and common language of mankind. And this, I think, will likewise appear with regard to the conclusion relating to morals, to wit, that moral approbation is only an agreeable feeling, and not a real judgment.

To prevent ambiguity as much as possible, let us attend to the meaning

of feeling and of judgment. These operations of the mind, perhaps, cannot be logically defined; but they are well understood, and easily distinguished, by their properties and adjuncts.

Feeling, or sensation, seems to be the lowest degree of animation we can conceive. We give the name of animal to every being that feels pain or pleasure; and this seems to be the boundary between the inanimate and animal creation.

We know no being of so low a rank in the creation of God, as to possess this animal power only without any other.

We commonly distinguish feeling from thinking, because it hardly deserves the name; and though it be, in a more general sense, a species of thought, is least removed from the passive and inert state of things inani

mate.

A feeling must be agreeable, or uneasy, or indifferent. It may be weak or strong. It is expressed in language either by a single word, or by such a contexture of words as may be the subject or predicate of a proposition, but such as cannot by themselves make a proposition. For it implies neither affirmation nor negation; and therefore cannot have the qualities of true or false, which distinguish propositions from all other forms of speech, and judgments from all other acts of the mind.

That I have such a feeling, is indeed an affirmative proposition, and expresses testimony grounded upon an intuitive judgment. But the feeling is only one term of this proposition; and it can only make a proposition when joined with another term, by a verb affirming or denying.

As feeling distinguishes the animal nature from the inanimate; so judging seems to distinguish the rational nature from the merely animal.

Though judgment in general is expressed by one word in language, as the most complex operations of the mind may be; yet a particular judgment can only be expressed by a sentence, and by that kind of sentence which logicians call a proposition, in which there must necessarily be a verb in the indicative mood, either expressed or understood.

Every judgment must necessarily be true or false, and the same may be said of the proposition which expresses it. It is a determination of the understanding, with regard to what is true, or false, or dubious.

In judgment, we can distinguish the object about which we judge, from the act of the mind in judging of that object. In mere feeling there is no such distinction. The object of judgment must be expressed by a proposition; and belief, disbelief, or doubt, always accompanies the judgment we form. If we judge the proposition to be true, we must believe it; if we judge it to be false, we must disbelieve it; and if we be uncertain whether it be true or false, we must doubt.

The toothach, the headach, are words which express uneasy feelings; but to say that they express a judgment would be ridiculous.

That the sun is greater than the earth, is a proposition, and therefore the object of judgment; and when affirmed or denied, believed or disbelieved, or doubted, it expresses judgment; but to say that it expresses only a feeling in the mind of him that believes it, would be ridiculous.

These two operations of mind, when we consider them separately, are very different, and easily distinguished. When we feel without judging, or judge without feeling, it is impossible, without very gross inattention, to mistake the one for the other.

But in many operations of the mind, both are inseparably conjoined under one name; and when we are not aware that the operation is complex, we may take one ingredient to be the whole, and overlook the other.