o which, therefore, the ordinary moral sentiment does not
attach in the same way that it does to the plainer and more direct
applications. Thus, if it can be shewn, as it undoubtedly can be, that
smuggling falls under the head of stealing, and holding out false hopes
under that of lying, the moralist need take no account of the lax moral
sentiment which exists with regard to these practices, though, of
course, in estimating the guilt of the individual as distinct from the
character of the act, due allowance must be made for his imperfect
appreciation of the moral bearings of his conduct. This exception, as
will be found in the next chapter, covers, and therefore at once
justifies, a large proportion of the criticisms which, in the present
advanced stage of morality, when the more fundamental principles have
been already settled, it is still open to us to make.

It remains now to enquire what is the justification of the test
propounded in this chapter. I do not found it on any external
considerations, whether of Law or Revelation, both of which, I conceive,
presuppose morality, but on the very make and constitution of our
nature. The justification of the moral test and the source of the moral
feeling are alike, I conceive, to be discovered by an examination of
human nature, and, so far as that nature has a divine origin, so far is
the origin of morality divine. Whatever the ultimate source of morality
may be, to us, at all events, it can only be known as revealed or
reflected in ourselves. What, then, is it in the constitution of our
nature, which leads us to aim at the well-being of ourselves and those
around us, and to measure our own conduct and that of others by the
extent to which it promotes these ends? In answering this question, I
must give a brief account of the ultimate principles of human nature,
though this account has been partly anticipated in the last chapter.
Human nature, in its last analysis, seems, so far as it is concerned
with action, to consist of certain impulses or feelings, and a power of
comparing with one another the results which follow from the
gratification of these feelings, which power reacts upon the several
feelings themselves by way of intensifying, checking, or controlling
them. This power we call Reason. The feelings themselves fall into two
principal groups, the egoistic or self-regarding feelings, which centre
in a man's self, and are developed by his personal needs, and the
altruis