may be the
hypothesis on which they are explained, or which in doubtful cases
may be applied to the regulation of them, we are very rarely, if ever,
called upon at the moment of performing them to determine their effect
upon the happiness of mankind.

There is a theory which has been contrasted with Utility by Paley and
others--the theory of a moral sense: Are our ideas of right and wrong
innate or derived from experience? This, perhaps, is another of those
speculations which intelligent men might 'agree to discard.' For it has
been worn threadbare; and either alternative is equally consistent
with a transcendental or with an eudaemonistic system of ethics, with
a greatest happiness principle or with Kant's law of duty. Yet to avoid
misconception, what appears to be the truth about the origin of
our moral ideas may be shortly summed up as follows:--To each of us
individually our moral ideas come first of all in childhood through
the medium of education, from parents and teachers, assisted by the
unconscious influence of language; they are impressed upon a mind which
at first is like a waxen tablet, adapted to receive them; but they soon
become fixed or set, and in after life are strengthened, or perhaps
weakened by the force of public opinion. They may be corrected and
enlarged by experience, they may be reasoned about, they may be brought
home to us by the circumstances of our lives, they may be intensified
by imagination, by reflection, by a course of action likely to confirm
them. Under the influence of religious feeling or by an effort of
thought, any one beginning with the ordinary rules of morality may
create out of them for himself ideals of holiness and virtue. They
slumber in the minds of most men, yet in all of us there remains some
tincture of affection, some desire of good, some sense of truth, some
fear of the law. Of some such state or process each individual is
conscious in himself, and if he compares his own experience with that
of others he will find the witness of their consciences to coincide with
that of his own. All of us have entered into an inheritance which we
have the power of appropriating and making use of. No great effort of
mind is required on our part; we learn morals, as we learn to talk,
instinctively, from conversing with others, in an enlightened age, in
a civilized country, in a good home. A well-educated child of ten years
old already knows the essentials of morals: 'Thou shalt not st