primitive,
fact of our constitution. He does not always keep this distinct from
the Moral Sentiment; he, in fact, mixes the two sentiments together in
his language, a thing almost inevitable, but yet inconsistent with the
advocacy of a distinct moral sentiment.

He includes among the Selfish Systems the Ethical Theory of Paley,
which he reprobates in both its leading points--everlasting happiness
as the motive, and the will of God as the rule. On the one point, this
theory is liable to all the objections against a purely selfish system;
and, on the other point, he makes the usual replies to the founding of
morality on the absolute will of the Deity.

Brown next criticises the system of Adam Smith. Admitting that we have
the sympathetic feeling that Smith proceeds upon, he questions its
adequacy to constitute the moral sentiment, on the ground that it is
not a perpetual accompaniment of our actions. There must be a certain
_vividness_ of feeling or of the display of feeling, or at least a
sufficient cause of vivid feeling, to call the sympathy into action. In
the numerous petty actions of life, there is an absence of any marked
sympathy.

But the essential error of Smith's system is, that it assumes the very
moral feelings that it is meant to explain. If there were no antecedent
moral feelings, sympathy could not afford them; it is only a mirror to
reflect what is already in existence. The feelings that we sympathize
with, are themselves moral feelings already; if it were not so, the
reflexion of them from a thousand breasts would not give them a moral
nature.

Brown thinks that Adam Smith was to some extent misled by an ambiguity
in the word sympathy; a word applied not merely to the participation of
other men's feelings, but to the further and distinct fact of the
_approbation_ of those feeling's.

Although siding in the main with Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, Brown
objects to their designation Moral Sense, as expressing the innate
power of moral approbation. If 'Sense' be interpreted merely as
susceptibility, he has nothing to say, but if it mean a primary medium
of perception, like the eye or the ear, he considers it a mistake. It
is, in his view, an _emotion_, like hope, jealousy, or resentment,
rising up on the presentation of a certain class of objects. He farther
objects to the phrase 'moral ideas,' also used by Hutcheson. The moral
emotions are more akin to love and hate, than to perception or
judgment.

B