derived from this source seem to
occupy the same place in the moral system, that first truths, or
intuitive articles of belief, do in the intellectual. Like them, also,
they admit of no direct proofs by processes of reasoning; and, when
sophistical arguments are brought against them, the only true answer
consists in an appeal to the conscience of every uncontaminated
mind;--by which we mean chiefly the consciousness of its own moral
impressions, in a mind which has not been degraded in its moral
perceptions by a course of personal depravity. This is a consideration
of the utmost practical importance; and it will probably appear that
many well-intended arguments, respecting the first principles of moral
truth, have been inconclusive, in the same manner as were attempts to
establish first truths by processes of reasoning,--because the line of
argument adopted in regard to them was one of which they are not
susceptible. The force of this analogy is in no degree weakened by the
fact, that there is, in many cases, an apparent difference between that
part of our mental constitution, on which is founded our conviction of
first truths, and that principle from which is derived our impression of
moral truth:--For the former continues the same in every mind which is
neither obscured by idiocy nor distorted by insanity; but the moral
feelings become vitiated by a process of the mind itself, by which it
has gradually gone astray from rectitude. Hence the difference we find
in the decisions of different men, respecting moral truth, arising from
peculiarities in their own mental condition;--and hence that remarkable
obscuration of mind, at which some men at length arrive, by which the
judgment is entirely perverted respecting the first great principles of
moral purity. When, therefore, we appeal to certain principles in the
mental constitution, as the source of our first impressions of moral
truth, our appeal is made chiefly to a mind which is neither obscured by
depravity, nor bewildered by the refinements of a false philosophy:--it
is made to a mind in which conscience still holds some degree of its
rightful authority, and in which there is a sincere and honest desire to
discover the truth. These two elements of character must go together in
every correct inquiry in moral science; and, to a man in an opposite
condition, we should no more appeal, in regard to the principles of
moral truth, than we should take from the fatuous person o