attending the Practice of
Virtue; the use of Trials, and the essentials of a good or a bad
Character. The considerations adduced are a number of perfectly
well-known maxims on the practice of morality, and scarcely add
anything to the elucidation of the author's Moral Theory. The
concluding chapter, on Natural Religion, contains nothing original.

To sum up the views of Price:--

I.--As regards the Moral Standard, he asserts that a perception of the
Reason or the Understanding,--a sense of fitness or congruity between
actions and the agents, and all the circumstances attending them,--is
what determines Right and Wrong.

He finds it impracticable to maintain his position without sundry
qualifications, as we have seen. Virtue is naturally adapted to
_please_ every observing mind; vice the contrary. Right actions must be
_grateful_, wrong ungrateful to us. To _behold_ virtue is to _admire_
her. In contemplating the actions of moral agents, we have _both_ a
perception of the understanding and a feeling of the heart. He thus
re-admits an element of feeling, along with the intellect, in some
undefined degree; contending only that _all morality_ is not to be
resolved into feeling or instinct. We have also noticed another
singular admission, to the effect that only superior natures can
discover virtue by the understanding. Reason alone, did we possess it
in a high degree, would answer all the ends of the passions. Parental
affection would be unnecessary, if parents were sufficiently alive to
the reasons of supporting the young, and were virtuous enough to be
always determined by them.

Utility, although not the _sole_ ground of Justice, is yet admitted to
be _one_ important reason or ground of many of its maxims.

II.--The nature of the Moral Faculty, in Price's theory, is not a
separate question from the standard, but the same question. His
discussion takes the form of an enquiry into the Faculty:--'What is the
power within us that perceives the distinctions of Right and Wrong?'
The two questions are mixed up throughout, to the detriment of
precision in the reasoning.

With his usual facility of making concessions to other principles, he
says it is not easy to determine how far our natural sentiments may be
altered by custom, education, and example: while it would be
unreasonable to conclude that all is derived from these sources. That
part of our moral constitution depending on instinct is liable to be
corrupted by cu