* The most illumiiifttlDf; critique of Butler with which I am acquainted is contained in Green's Works, vol. iii. pp. 98-104.
logical changes in the brain and nervous system, whicli render these actions constant. Thus, according to Spencer, is begotten a conscience ci faculty, to whicli lie i ven gives the name of intui tion. Phis sensational ist psychology, thus strenj^th- ened by evolution, has called forth various replies.
(a) Intuitionism enters its earnest denial. Dr. Martineau's strictures on evolutionary ethics are powerful, and his general ethical doctrine is most earnest and impressive. His position dosely resembles that of Butler in last century. Like Butler, he gives an account of the springs of moral action. But whereas Butler only mentions two, Self-love and Benevolence, Martineau's list is most elaborate, containing no fewer than thirteen pas- sions, propensions, sentiments, or affections. Quito as Butler had done, he gives to conscience a judicial function in respect to these springs of action. Distinctive in Rlarttneau, however, is his doctrine that conscience judges, not of the ri"ht- ness of acts, but of the rank of motives. Con- science he defines to be ' the critical perception we have of the relative authority of our several principles of action.' Right and wrong he defines thus : ' Every action is ri"ht whicli, in presence of a lower principle, follows a higher ; every action is wrong whicli, in presence of a higher principle, follows a lower.' Eloquent and powerful as Dr. Martineau's exposition is, it is open to the objection which may be brought against Butler. Wh'^nce come these springs of action ? Do they simply appear before the judgment-seat of con- science, without any prior determination by se f- consciousness ? Then we are thrown back, as we were by Butler, upon current sensational psy- chology. And whence comes conscience ? Does it simply appear, and seat itself in judicial state, a separate, unique faculty, inexplicable and mysterious, owning no organic relation to self- consciousness ? Then its authority is blind, and, as in Butler's doctrine, is unsupported by power.
(6) A conclusive answer can be reached only through ■■% consideration of the po.ssibility of experience in general, and of moral experience in particular. Such an answer is to be fourd in Green's Prolegomena to Ethics. Press the analysis of sensation as far back as we please, make our list of feelings and instincts as detailed as possible, we never get a mere sensation or instinct, such as we might suppose it to be in the lower animals, but always the sensation as it is to a self, already modified by its relation to self- consciousness. In the simplest sensation, there is implied the operation of a spiritual principle, which is the basis of the possibility at once of knowledge and of morality. The sensationalist psycholo^ is thus deprived of its whole raison d'etre. It exists in order to get personality out of sensations. It can do so, only because personality is therein already implied.
The hypothesis of evolution is of no use to sensa- tionalism, and does not invalidate the argument of idealism. ' That countless generations should have passed during which a transmitted organism was progressively modified by reaction on its surround- ings, by struggle for existence or otherwise, till its functions became such that an eternal conscious- ness could realize or reproduce itself through them, — this might add to tlie wonder Nvith which the consideration of what we do and are mu.st always fill us, but it could not alter the resulta of that consideration. If such be discovered to be the case, the discovery cannot affect the analysis of knowledge of what is implied in there being a world to be known, and in our knowing it, on which we found our theory of the action of a free or self-conditioned and eternal raind in man ' (Prolegomena, p. 82). Man. therefore, is a self or
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personality, which is not, however, an incident in a series, but is rooted in an infinite self or per- sonality. Uur individual self-consciousness derives from an I is maintained by an infinite, eternal, UMversal, self-consciousness ; Green would say, is a ' reproduction ' of it, — a phrase open to miscon- struction. Knowledge, therefore, is the gradual discovery of mind or spirit in tliin;;s, the e.xliibi- tioii of tlie world as tlie self-manifestation of an infinite per.sonality, with wliom the finite intelli- gence of man is one. Morality is the progressive accomplishment of an eternal purpose, with which the individual is and ought to be at one, wliose poal is the perfection of man. The good for man IS self-realization, but it is the realization of an inlinite self, and is thus identical with the widest possible range of good for others, and is attained l)y the [irofoundest self -.surrender. The moral faculty in man, the practical rea.son or conscience, is no special inexplicable endowment, a vox ctiimanti.i in dcsi-Ho. It is the man himself, con- scious in all action of a good, which he either reaches or fails to reach, which in either case stands above his separate impulses, in the one case apjiroWng and beckoning him onward and upward, in tlie otlier condemning him and binding on him the penalty due to one who has broken the law of his own being. Conscience, thus conceived, may also with equal truth be described as the revelation of inlinite good to man, or the voice of God witness- ing to eternal right within the individual soul. It is the voice of the man's true self, and his true self is ideally one with God. On such lines alone is the sen.sationalist attack on ab.solute right and on conscience successfully met, and room found for Christian ethic, and a Christian doctrine of con- science.