ty, and to reject
the purely 'intellectual' system. To assign the position of the moral
faculty in the psychological system is to show its utility. On the
other hand, it was the very aim of the school to avoid the sceptical
conclusions of Hume in philosophy, and in ethics to avoid the complete
identification of morality with utility. There must be a distinction
between the judgments, 'this is right,' and 'this is useful'; even
'useful to men in general.' Hence, on the one hand, morality is
immediately dictated by a special sense or faculty, and yet its
dictates coincide with the dictates of utility. I have spoken of this
view as represented by Dugald Stewart; and Brown had, according to his
custom, moved a step further by diminishing the list of original first
principles, and making 'virtue' simply equivalent to 'feelings' of
approval and disapproval.[568] Virtue, he said, is useful; the utility
'accompanies our moral approbation; but the perception of that utility
does not constitute our moral approbation, nor is it necessarily
presupposed by it.'[569] He compares the coincidence between virtue
and utility to Leibniz's pre-established harmony.[570] The position is
familiar. The adaptation of an organism to its conditions may be taken
either as an explanation of its development or as a proof of a
creative purpose.

Mackintosh takes nearly the same position. Ethical inquiries, he says,
relate to 'two perfectly distinct subjects.' We have the problem of
the 'criterion' (What is the distinction between right and wrong?) and
the problem of the 'moral sentiments' (What are the feelings produced
by the contemplation of right and wrong?). In treating of the
feelings, again, we must avoid the confusion caused in the older
philosophy by the reduction of 'feeling' to 'thought.'[571] Reason
and sensation are distinct though inseparably combined; and hence, he
argues, it is a fallacy to speak with Clarke as if reason could by
itself be a motive. An argument to influence conduct must always be in
the last resort an appeal to a 'feeling.'[572] It is idle to tell a
man that conduct is infamous unless he _feels_ infamy to be painful.
We have then to ask what are the feelings which prompt to morality. So
far as the criterion is concerned, Mackintosh fully agrees with Hume,
whose theory that 'general utility constitutes a general ground of
moral distinctions can never be impugned until some example can be
produced of a virtue generally