CHAPTER VI.

THE MORAL SENSE COMPARED WITH TASTE,

The term moral sense. FROM what was said in the preceding chapter, it appears that conscience, or the moral sense, is not a simple but a compound faculty, including both an intellectual act or judgment, and a peculiar feeling or emotion. The name moral sense was probably adopted to express this feeling, or internal emotion. It will serve perhaps to illustrate this subject, if we bring into view another faculty, between which and the moral sense there is a remarkable analogy. I refer to what is commonly called Taste, or that faculty by which men are in some degree capable of perceiving and relishing the beauties of nature and art. In this there is a judgment respecting that quality denominated Beauty, but there is also 45a vivid emotion of a peculiar kind, accompanying this judgment. The external objects in which beauty is resident, might be distinctly seen, and yet no such quality be perceived; as was before mentioned in regard to certain animals, whose sight and hearing is more acute than those of men, and which yet appear to be utterly insensible of the quality called beauty.

Analogy between judgments of taste and conscience. If the question should be raised whether Taste is merely an exercise of the understanding, the proper answer would be precisely as in the case of conscience, viz., so far as it consists in judgment, it appertains to the intellectual faculty; but so far as it consists in emotion, it does not. And in this, as in matters of conscience, errors of judgment will affect the emotions produced. In cultivating Taste, it is of the utmost importance that correct opinions be adopted in relation to the objects of this faculty. The question may perhaps be asked, why either of these should be considered a distinct faculty of the mind. In regard to mental faculties or powers, there is a want of agreement 46among philosophers, as to what is requisite to entitle any mental operation to be referred to a distinct and original faculty. Whether in either case a distinct faculty. In these two cases, there exists in the mind a capacity for perceiving peculiar qualities in certain appropriate objects. Though the ideas of beauty and morality are judgments of the understanding, it requires a faculty suited to the objects, to enable the understanding to obtain the simple ideas of beauty and morality. We can conceive of a rational mind without such a capacity. There is also in these faculties, the susceptibility of a peculiar emotion, dissimilar from all others; and these two things constitute the faculty of Taste or Conscience. But it is a matter of no importance whether taste and conscience be called distinct and original faculties, if what has been said respecting their nature be admitted.

Original susceptibility in both. There is in the human mind a capacity of discerning what is termed beauty, in the works of nature and art. This judgment is accompanied by a pleasurable emotion, and to this capacity or 47susceptibility we give the name Taste. There is also a power of discerning moral qualities, which conception is also attended with a vivid emotion; and to this power or faculty we give the name Conscience, or the moral faculty. Both these are so far original parts of our constitution, that if there did not exist in every mind a sense of beauty and its contrary, and a sense of right and wrong, such ideas could be generated, or communicated by no process of education.