always, lost hold of in the labyrinths of philosophy—a clue, the loss of which has made inquirers represent man as if he lived in distinct[1] sections, and were an inorganic agglutination of several natures,—the percipient, the intellectual, and the moral—with separate principles regulating each. This clue consists in our tracing the principle of our moral agency back into the very principle in virtue of which we become percipient beings—and in showing that in both cases it is the same act which is exerted—an act, namely, of freedom or antagonism against the caused or derivative modifications of our nature. Thus, to use the language of a foreign writer, we shall at least make the attempt to cut our scientific system out of one piece, and to marshal the frittered divisions of philosophy into that organic wholeness which belongs to the great original of which they profess, and of which they ought to be the faithful copy—we mean man himself. In particular, we trust that the discovery (if such it may be called) of the principle we have just mentioned, may lead the reflective reader to perceive the inseparable connection between psychology and moral philosophy (we should rather say their essential sameness), together with the futility of all those mistaken attempts which have been often made to break down their organic unity into the two distinct departments of "intellectual" and "moral" science.
Another consideration connected with this principle is, that instead of being led by it to do what many philosophers, in order to preserve their consistency, have done—instead of being led by it to observe in morality nothing but the features of a higher self-love, and a more refined sensuality, together with the absence of free-will: we are, on the contrary, led by it to note, even in the simplest act of perception, an incipient self-sacrifice, the presence of a dawning will struggling to break forth, and the aspect of an infant morality beginning to develop itself. This consideration we can only indicate thus briefly; for we must now hurry on to our point.
We are aware of the attempts which have been made to invest our emotions with the stamp and attribute of morality: but, in addition to the testimony of our own experience, we have the highest authority for holding that none of the natural feelings or modifications of the human heart partake in any degree of a moral character. We are told by revelation, and the eye of reason recognises the truth of the averment, that love itself, that is, natural love—a feeling which certainly must bear the impress of morality if any of our emotions do so;—we are told by revelation in emphatic terms, that such love has no moral value or significance whatsoever. "If ye love them," says our Saviour, "which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?" To love those who love us is natural love: and can any words quash and confound the claim of such love to rank as a moral excellence or as a moral development more effectually than these?
"But," continues the same Divine Teacher, "I say unto you, Love your enemies;" obviously meaning, that in this kind of love, as contradistinguished from the other, a new and higher element is to be found—the element of morality—and that this kind of love is a state worthy of approbation and reward: which the other is not. Here, then, we find a discrimination laid down between two kinds of love:—love of friends and love of enemies: and the hinge upon which this discrimination turns is, that the character of morality is denied to the former of these, while it is acceded to the latter. But now comes the question: why is the one of these kinds of love said to be a moral state or act, and why is the other not admitted to be so? To answer this question we must look into the respective characters and ingredients of these two kinds of love.
Natural love, that is, our love of our friends, is a mere affair of temperament, and in entertaining it, we are just as passive as our bodies are when exposed to the warmth of a cheerful fire. It lies completely under the causal law; and precisely as any other
- ↑ "You may understand," says S. T. Coleridge, "by insect, life in sections." By this he means that each insect has several centres of vitality, and not merely one; or that it has no organic unity, or at least no such decided organic unity as that which man possesses.
