BOOK I. § 2. The special scope of Ethic. clear, determines the judgment as action; we both do the thing and appear to think it the best thing to do, for the judgment as a total act is itself determined, not the action determined against the judgment. But does the greater pleasure supply a valid reason as well as an effectual motive to the judgment for its determination? This is a question which is not so clear. Now those who insist that the motive determining the judgment actually is eo ipso the thing which the judging or reasoning element of the judgment thinks best overlook the possible effects of a distinction, which is always to be found in the judgment itself, between its volitional and its comparing functions. Judgment, inasmuch as it is action, is compound; will as well as reason is contained in it. The determination of the judgment may mean the determination of the volitional element alone, with small contribution, even almost none, from the comparing element, or again in direct opposition to the knowledge given by that element, as where we persist in doing what we know at the time is pernicious. This analysis of acts of judgment is allimportant. All volition is reasoning, since it includes some degree of comparison, and conversely every act of reasoning is a voluntary act; it includes the two component elements or strains, perception of a comparison or relation between two perceptions, and volition to hold them together till they either combine or one excludes the other. Pleasure is a motive which acts on and determines volition; the truth or untruth of the perceptions in relation is what is perceived by the comparing element, in virtue of which the volition is reasoning. It is the empirical method only which persists in treating an BOOK I. CH. I. act of reasoning and an act of volition as two separate and complete acts, in separating so-called actions from so-called reasonings. Nothing but confusion can result from such a deviation from the truth of scope of Ethic. nature. 8. However, when we have drawn this distinction the question still remains, whether there is any ground or reason determinant of the reasoning element or strain in judgment, different from pleasure, which is confessedly the determinant or motive of the volitional element. The Utilitarian school seem to me to have answered this question in the negative, without having clearly enough perceived the distinction of the two elements in the act of reasoning which gives it significance. They are thus always recurring to the question of fact instead of to the question of right. What makes one course of conduct to be judged better than another? They reply, Its being perceived to be productive ultimately of the greater pleasure. But is this judgment right ? They reply, The greater pleasure is its own justification. They thus take up, with respect to the determination of judgment, the same ground which was above supposed to be occupied by those who denied the validity of judgment against fact; the question of right and of justification is in both cases merged in the question of fact. 9. In opposition to this the other school of moralists ask, Why is it that we have the conception of right, of duty, of moral obligation, as things different in kind from pleasure, even from those pleasures which are attached to the observance of these conceptions themselves? And although various theories have been started in order to satisfy this demand, § 2. The special BOOK I. § 2. scope of Ethic. such as, for instance, that the conceptions in question have been produced by long association and The special experience of the superior kinds of pleasure with steady resolution in virtuous conduct; or that they have arisen from the notion of debt enforced, or of punishment inflicted, by superior power; or by means such as these with the additional ingraining force of hereditary transmission, (see, for instance, Mr. Herbert Spencer's Letter to Mr. Mill, printed in Prof. Bain's Mental and Moral Science, page 721, 2d edit.); yet still the enquirers are not satisfied, but keep steady to their conviction, that conceptions so different must have a different source, and conceptions so much loftier a loftier one than those to which they are thus referred. You must prove to us, they would say, that such a transformation of notions of expediency or might into the notion of moral right is not only possible but actual, must lay your finger, as it were, on the moment of operation, before we can consent to give up the belief that the latter has always been, what it appears to be now, a primary and original fact in consciousness. For, as a matter of fact, the conception of right constantly recurs in contradistinction to that of pleasure or of power, as is subtilly remarked in the following passage from a well-known work of this school,-Price's Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, Chap. vi. p. 185, 2d edit. "One cannot but observe on this occasion, how the ideas of right and wrong force themselves upon us, and in some form or other, always remain, even when we think we have annihilated them. Thus, after we have supposed all actions and ends to be in themselves indifferent, it is natural to conceive, that therefore it is right to give ourselves up to the guidance of unre- 10. And so also on the other hand, although the disciples of the school of moral law are thus staunch in maintaining their conviction of the original difference and superiority of some principle of right as opposed to expediency or to might, it is clear that the only proof of their conviction being true would consist in their being able to put their finger, as it were, on the spot, and say what precisely it is in a judgment, or in the object of a judgment, which gives it this distinct character of right, duty, moral goodness, or moral obligation. Until this is either done or shown to be impossible, the controversy be VOL. I. C BOOK I. CH. I. § 2. The special scope of Ethic. tween the two schools must continue. But to point out this element precisely is a matter which depends on analysis of the phenomena of consciousness, an analysis more searching and accurate than any which has yet been performed. Here then we are driven back upon Metaphysic. 11. Metaphysic proper is purely speculative, and contains two branches, statical analysis and dynamical; the statical analysis determines the nature, the Tí or, of an object or state of consciousness, the dynamical determines the general modes of movement or sequence of such objects or states, and to that extent the Tas Tagayíveraι of each of them. But that part of Metaphysic in a larger sense, which is practical as well as speculative, namely Ethic, while it retains as purely and entirely speculative the dynamical branch of enquiry, which determines the as agαYivera of judgments and actions, introduces into the statical branch, the analysis of the rí or, a distinction between what is and what ought to be. The practical moment, the moment of validity, of judgment, of better or worse, the moment of "ought,"this is discoverable only in the statical analysis, the Tí or, of objects and states of consciousness. § 3. 1. The same considerations which show the insufficiency of the methods of the just mentioned schools, unless founded on previous analysis of the phenomena of consciousness, show also the insufficiency of the method which approaches the examination of the practice of individuals from the side of their relation to society, and endeavours to determine the laws of their practice by deduction from the laws of the practice of men acting in masses, whether statically in a nation or state as it exists at |