lation have been kindled upon the coast of Africa; villages and towns have been destroyed; a continual war has been kept up among the native tribes; and probably forty millions of persons have been torn away from their native country, and consigned to perpetual slavery.

While this erroneous speculative opinion held possession, to a considerable extent, of the minds of men, the authority of conscience was paralyzed; her voice, if it was heard at all, was feeble, and scarcely excited notice. And why should it be otherwise? If the Negroes are truly an inferior race to white men, darkened in intellect and imbruted in the affections, incapable of taking care of themselves, and still more of any intellectual and social advancement, what harm is there in bringing them into vassalage, and making them grind, like the brute animals to which they are so nearly related, in the prisonhouse of the more favoured species? The difficulty is not so much with the conscience as with the erroneous opinion.

We learn from the Memoirs of the Rev. John Newton, of England, a man as much distinguished for his piety as for his intelligence and eloquence, that he was for some years personally engaged in the Slave Trade; and that, too, after he had professed, and to all appearance with great sincerity, to be guided by the principles of the Christian religion. Such were the prevalent notions in regard to the blacks, that the traffic does not appear to have occurred to him as being morally wrong. He expressly says: "During the time I was engaged in the Slave Trade, I never had the least scruple of its lawfulness." He pursued it without any of those compunctious visitings, which could not fail to have troubled him if he had regarded them, as surely they ought to be regarded, as children of the same common parent, and as participators, in the view of unprejudiced justice, in the same common inheritance of natural rights.

416. Further illustrations of the influence of wrong speculative opin

ions.

The speculative opinion has formerly existed very extensively, and does still to some degree, that the civil au

thority has a right, in relation to its own subjects, to exact conformity in the matters of religion. And the result has been, that thousands and hundreds of thousands, at various times and in different countries, have been subjected to imprisonment, the torture, exile, and death. And those who have been the leading agents in these horrible transactions, from the persecutors of the Primitive Christians down to the Lauds and Bonners of later times, have perpetrated them, in their own estimation, with washed hands and a pure heart. They have gone from the Oratory to the dungeon of the Inquisition; they have, with unquestionable sincerity, looked up to Heaven for a blessing, as they have applied to their mangled victims the screw and the wheel of torture; they have arisen from the knee of supplication to kindle with a pious haste the fires of Smithfield, and to wield the exterminating sword of the St. Bartholomew. They have done all this merely in consequence of entertaining a wrong speculative opinion conscientiously.

§ 417. Influence of early associations on moral judgments.

Our moral judgments, in the fourth place, are sometimes perplexed and led in a direction different from what they would otherwise be, by means of early associations. -The principle of association does not operate upon the moral capacity directly; it operates indirectly with considerable influence. When a particular action is to be judged of, it calls up in the minds of different individuals different and distinct series of accessory circumstances. It has the effect to place the thing, intellectually consided, in a different position. This difference in the tendencies of the associating principle can hardly fail to have considerable effect in modifying the sentiment of approbation or disapprobation resulting from the consideration of any particular action.

Accordingly, when vices are committed by near friends, by a brother or a parent, although they fill us with the deepest grief, (perhaps much greater than we should feel in the case of those who did not sustain so near a relation,) it is frequently the case that they do not excite within us such abhorrence of the actual guilt as we should be

likely to feel in other cases. Our prepossessions in favour of the persons who have committed the crime, suggest a thousand circumstances which seem to us to alleviate its aggravation. We frame for them a multitude of plausible excuses, which we should not have thought of doing had it not been for the endearments and intercourse of our previous connexion.

Savage life also gives us an illustration of the views now expressed. Owing to the peculiar situation of those in that state, and the consequent early associations, a factitious and exaggerated importance is attached to mere courage; and gentleness, equanimity, and benevolence are, as virtues, proportionally depressed. In this way their moral judgments are not unfrequently perplexed and rendered erroneous.

§ 418. Of diversities in the moral judgment in connexion with an excited state of the passions.

Furthermore, there may be diversities of moral judgment; in other words, the moral nature may occasionally be perplexed and led astray in its action, under the influence of a state of excited passion.-The action of all the parts of the mind is a conditional one; that is to say, it takes place only under certain assignable circumstances. It is, for instance, one condition of moral action, as we have repeatedly had occasion to notice, that there must be an antecedent perception of the thing, whatever it is, upon which the moral judgment is to be passed. This condition of moral action is violated in the case under consideration, as well as in others. In a time of great excitement of passion, the moral emotion which would have existed under other circumstances has failed to arise, because the soul is intensely and wholly taken up with another species of feeling. The perceptive and comparing part of the mind is not in a situation to take a right view of the subject, whatever it is. But after the present passion has subsided, so as to give the person an opportunity to inquire and reflect, the power of moral judgment returns. And at once the individual, who has been the subject of such violence of feeling, looks with horror on the deeds which he has committed.

In this, and in all the cases which have been mentioned, the conscience will probably be found to be in harmony with itself. Its defective judgments are not owing to any defect in its own nature; but to the circumstance, owing to ignorance, to early training, prejudice, wrong associations, and inordinate passion, and perhaps some other causes similar in their results, that an imperfect or distorted view of the facts has been presented before it

CHAPTER V.

MORAL EDUCATION.

419. Suggestions on the importance of moral education.

We do not feel at liberty to leave the subject of the Moral Sensibilities without offering a few remarks, chiefly of a practical nature, on the subject of moral education in general. It is perhaps unnecessary to occupy time in attempting to show the importance of such education, since no one can be ignorant of the deplorable consequences which follow from an utter neglect of it. But, notwithstanding the general concession of its importance, it has ever held a subordinate rank, compared with that purely intellectual education which deals wholly with the mere acquisition of knowledge.

While no one presumes to assert that moral education is unimportant, it must be acknowledged that it has been exceedingly neglected, in consequence of the greater value which has generally been attached to that training of the mind which has exclusive relation to its intellectual part. Children and youth have been taught with great zeal in everything where the head is concerned; in grammar, geography, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and the like; and in almost nothing which concerns the heart. No pains have been spared in favour of the intellect, while the sensitive part of our nature, the moral emotions, the lower modifications of desire, and the affections, have been left to take care of themselves.

Supposing this to be nearly the true state of things, every reflecting mind must contemplate it with regret, and will look forward with great interest to the time, when moral education shall at least be put on a footing with intellectual, if it do not take the precedence of it. Certain it is, that a firm and ample foundation is laid for this species of mental training, if the doctrines which have been advanced in the course of this Work are correct; FIRST, that we have intellectually the power of forming the abstract conceptions of right and wrong, of merit and demerit, which necessarily involves that there is an immutable standard of rectitude; and, SECOND, that, in the department of the Sensibilities, we have, in correspondence with the fact of such an immutable standard, the implanted principle of the Moral Sensibility or Conscience, which, in the Emotive form of its action, indicates our conformity to the standard of rectitude or divergency from it, and in its Obligatory action authoritatively requires conformity. We assert that we have here basis enough for a consistent and durable moral education; especially when we take into view the close connexion existing between the conscience and the intellect, particularly the reasoning power.

§ 420. The mind early occupied either with good or bad principles. It may perhaps be suggested here, admitting the general fact of the great importance of moral education, that it would be better to leave the subject of morals until persons are old enough to decide on all subjects of this nature for themselves. This suggestion would be entitled to more weight, if it were possible, in the mean while, for the mind to remain a moral blank. But this does not appear to be the case. As the mind is continually operative, it is almost a matter of course that it receives, and, as it were, incorporates into itself, moral principles either right or wrong. We are surrounded with such a variety of active influences, that he who is not imbued with good cannot reasonably expect to be uncontaminated with evil. In order, therefore, to prevent the contaminations of vice, it is necessary to preoccupy the mind by the careful introduction and the faithful cultivation of the elements of