ARTICLE, LIII.

Simplicity of Moral Action. No. 3.

BY REV. WM. COCHRAN.

SEEN in the light of Westminster theology, a moral action bears a strong resemblance, in many respects, to the apparition which youthful imagination evokes from the charnel house and dimly discerns through the waving branches of a weepingwillow, as from time to time the moon looks forth from passing clouds. Its outline like that of the apparition is both ill defined and fluctuating; and like that of the apparition its essence is compounded of a large proportion of fantasy and a little reality, thereby almost wholly transmuted from its proper nature. A moment's reflection, convinced us that, between the adherents of that theology and ourselves, no fair issue could be made. on the great question which we had undertaken to discuss, until a previous investigation had clearly exhibited how much of this formidable spectre is fancy and moonshine, and had moulded the residuum into a shape,

"Distinguishable, in member joint and limb."

As the readiest and most inoffensive method of accomplishing this delicate task, we attempted to draw a plain line of demarkation between those phenomena in the human mind which are really and in themselves praise or blameworthy and all others by which they are conditionated, accompanied, and followed. This task has been executed in vain or to comparatively little purpose, if the result of our discussion shall not be faithfully applied to our future inquiries and if the reader is not so well acquainted with them as to be able to judge whether they be faithfully applied or not. This can hardly be hoped in all cases, after the unusual length of time which has disjoined our last from the present article. We deem it expedient therefore before proceeding farther to refresh his memory by a slight retrospect of the ground we have already gone over.

An examination of the writings of our opponents in this controversy, did not allow us to hope that we should encoun

ter no opposition in assuming our own definition of a moral action as our point of departure. We found, however, that they in common with all mankind, admit and every where assume the truth of the following propositions:

1. A moral action is one of which it can rationally be said that it ought, or ought not to be done.

2. It is an action which, without a contradiction, may be called right or wrong.

3. It is an action for which the agent is praise or blameworthy, and therefore justly deserving of reward or exposed to punishment.

From these admitted principles we deduced this grand inference: A moral action cannot be a necessary action. An action is necessary, when the agent at the time of its performance, and in the same circumstances which then environed him, could not have done otherwise. Or thus: "When the external influences, whether they be motives or physical forces which become the occasion of any action, so determine both its existence and all its qualities, that there is an impossibility of its not being, or being at all different from what it is, this action, when referred to the power on which these influences operate, is called a necessary action." We legitimated our inference by showng that a necessary action, as just defined, can neither be rationally required or prohibited, and therefore, that it can not without absurdity be called either right or wrong, or be supposed to render the agent either justly deserving of reward or liable to punishment.

Examining our outward actions, and the various phenomena of our intelligence and sensibility, we found them all to be subject to the law of absolute necessity; and by the preceding inference we excluded them wholly from the pale of morality.

It hence followed that responsibility can attach to the actions of the will alone. But a further investigation evinced, that our responsibilities are less extensive than even this narrow circle. Original acts of attention, and many other phenomena referable to the will, because spontaneous and unreflective, are not free. All executive volitions and dependent choices, through which ultimate intentions manifest themselves and seek to compass their objects are the necessary consequences of those intentions: hence they are no more really free than the unreflective acts of the will, or thought, feeling, or outward action. An ultimate intention, therefore, is the only phenomenon which is either absolutely free or real

ly responsible. This, then, is the definition to which our investigations at length conducted us:-A moral action is the choice of an ultimate end: Or, making intention synonymous with choice, and borrowing an adjective from its object: A moral action is an ultimate intention. We need not remark how strongly this definition contrasts with that which consistency would require, where blame-worthiness is predicated of the ontological existence as well as the active motions of a "corruption of nature" supposed to be derived from Adam by ordinary generation-of inborn constitutional tendencies, desires and aversions as well as voluntary acts of transgression-a real phantom, hideous and unformed, that rising from the ashes of the dead and lurking about holy places, holds a usurped empire over the credulity of mankind by the terror it inspires and the solemn guise it wears.

Three inquiries now present themselves. When is an intention right? and when is it wrong? By what test shall its character be exactly determined? To these inquiries we reply in general: an intention is right, when it terminates upon an object which the moral law requires us to choose; It is wrong, when it terminates upon a different object. Its character is in all cases determined by its object. But what does the moral law require us to choose? what is its most simple and exact enunciation? To this inquiry, ethical writers and theologians have given many apparently, and doubtless, some really different answers. Some for example, maintain that an intention must, of necessity, go out beyond the law and abstract idea of Right, Order, or Fitness, into the world of concrete existences actual and possible to find an object on which to terminate; that the only object which reason there discovers fit to be chosen as an ultimate end is that which is good or valuable in itself to God and his sentient universe; that nothing but happiness-meaning by that term, all those various enjoyments which constitute the well-being of the several orders of rational and sentient existences-is in itself, really good or valuable; and consequently, that nothing but the happiness of the universe can be the ultimate object which the law at all times requires us to choose. Its whole meaning, therefore,according to these philosophers,will be included in this simple imperative: Will at all times, as an ultimate end,the happiness of the sentient universe, so far forth as its actual and possible existence is known to you.

Others, admitting that happiness is a good, and perhaps, that it is a good per se, nevertheless maintain that it is not the only

thing which is good per se. They hold for example, that veracity, gratitude, humility, meekness, and the like, are every where valued and admired by the human mind, for their intrinsic worth and excellency without any reference whatever to their consequences. Hence if the human mind is not deceived in its spontaneous convictions they are not mere means subordinate to some ulterior end, but ends per se. According to this view the ultimate object of a right intention may be complex-consisting of several co-ordinate ends, such as happiness, virtue and its various modifications, to say nothing of moral praise-worthiness and other things which charm the reason by their own inherent lustre and not by any borrowed attractions. An enunciation of the law corresponding with this view would stand thus: Will at all times as an ultimate end the complex of all things which in your judgment are good in themselves.

Others, still, seem to exclude happiness entirely from the ultimate end of a right intention, and without telling us distinctly what they mean by the term right, whether an abstraction or a concretion, a subjective idea or an objective law, content themselves by simply saying that "to will the right for the sake of the right is the whole duty of man."

Jouffroy distinctly avows that moral order is the only bonum in se, of which, he contends that happiness is but the consequence, or, to use his own language, "the feeling." The allembracing requisition of the law according to this writer would be: "Will moral order, at all times for the sake of moral order."

According to Kant, the law urges its claims upon us anterior to all experience or any relationship with objects of space and time and consequently before we have any knowledge of actually existing objects of choice; and all these requirements are included in this brief categorical imperative: “ Act from a maxim at all times fit for law universal."

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This list of enunciations might be greatly extended. But it is already sufficiently long to answer our present purpose. There are two things which must have struck the reader in perusing it.

1. All these enunciations are based upon the assumption that there is one and only one end which the moral law requires all moral agents to choose. Each of them professes to be a correct exhibition of that one end. According to the first, it is happiness, and nothing else; according to the third it is right, and nothing else; according to the fourth it is moral order, and nothing else; according to the fifth it is a

maxim fit for law universal, and nothing else; and according to the second it is happiness and many things besides. All this is inexplicable,except upon the supposition that, in the estimation of their respective authors, the ultimate object which we are required to will, is of necessity the same for all rational beings. For if they suppose that there may be many different ends required of different individuals, or of the same individual at different times, the attempt to show that there is but one end-one universal and the only valid ground of moral obligation is perfectly absurd and even highly ridiculous.

2. They nevertheless greatly differ from each other in regard to what that end is. One asserts that it is nothing but happiness; another that it is nothing but right; another that it is nothing but moral order; another that it is nothing but a maxim fit for law universal; and still another that it is all these ends combined, or at least happiness and many things else. Now it needs not an oracle to tell us that if one be right the rest are wrong. The very existence of mutually exclusive, or even dissimilar theories where, in the nature of things, only one true theory is possible, is absolute demonstration of the total or partial falsehood of all of them save one; and till this one is ascertained, just suspicion is cast upon the pretensions of all. Like aspirants to a vacant throne, each of these theories lays claim to absolute and exclusive sovereignty; they all have their supporters apparently equally wise and equally good; and notwithstanding their numerous conflicts none of them has acknowledged itself defeated or abjured its right to reign, and the conflict still rages in all its fury. Under these circumstances a prudent on-looker will not be hasty in declaring himself for either theory, for he is as yet ignorant of the legality of its title. He may even suspect that a more profound investigation will at length compel them all to give place to a more fortunate aspirant,or by dropping their claims so far as they are exclusive and antagonistic, to negotiate a peace which shall entitle them all to equal participation in the prerogatives of sovereignty. At all events, be this as it may, no one can escape the conclusion that either the assumption of these philosophers is false, or that most, if not all of these theories are false; since they are nothing but a tissue of dissimi larities, and palpable contradictions; and the question cannot but arise, where is the falsehood found? a question of most vital importance in this discussion and the hinge on which turns the very possibility of ethical science. Preliminary to a correct answer to this question, we lay down this disjunctive