quire; but yet they must pay taxes to support the deficient secular system, and to make it opulent above all possible rivals; and then, if they choose to risk the costly experiment, they may establish other institutions under the shadow of those of the State, in confessed weakness and inferiority! Does not the whole difficulty spring from an attempt to imitate, under the altered conditions of modern society, the system which was only practicable in the old world, under a union of Church and State, and where all the people were of one professed religious faith?

We have no desire to substitute a mere sectarian scheme, with its petty rivalries and numerous weak institutions. With the present tendencies toward Christian union and coöperation, we should hope, ere long, to see distinctively Christian institutions on a common basis; not by the united efforts of two denominations, which always end in contention for the mastery, but of those of all denominations of Protestants who are in fundamental agreement. If the Roman Catholics, the evangelical Protestants, and the "Liberal" Christians should choose to have their separate arrangements for higher education, so much of rivalry might be wholesome in effect. And then, if unbelievers wish for their sons and daughters an education which omits all religious truth, and is "purely secular," from beginning to end, let them provide it at their own expense. Why should they expect the State to do it for them at the common expense, taxing Christian men to support a system to which they are in conscience opposed? Is it an incredible or an unreasonable thing, that there should be a conscience against an irreligious system of higher public education? May it not prove to be as strong and as enlightened as a conscience against a religious element in a public system?

These are questions which will be raised more frequently and earnestly in the future than in the past. They will be discussed in the religious denominations, and they will finally come up for settlement at the ballot-box. And this is the more certain to be, since the overthrow of slavery has taken out of our politics the question whether barbarism was to prevail in our land, and has left us face to face only with the topics which pertain to a Christian civilization.

ARTICLE II.-MORAL INTUITION VS. UTILITARIANISM.

WHAT are right and wrong? The intuitionist says: the right is the right, and the wrong is the wrong. These are simple ideas, admitting of no decomposition, and hence of no explanation. The utilitarian says: the right is that which tends to increase the sum of happiness, and the wrong is that which tends to diminish that sum or to produce misery.

How do we know what is right or wrong? The intuitionist says: by an innate moral power which calculates no results but decides upon inspection. The utilitarian holds, that only an examination of consequences can decide what is right or wrong.

Why should I do what is right? Because it is right, says the intuitionist. We hold no parley with those who seek a reason for rectitude. The majesty of duty is not to be insulted by stipulations as to what you shall have for your service. Right is its own reason, and demands of every one an unconditional surrender. The utilitarian says, I must do the right because thereby I shall secure my own or others' good. I make very little of this myth, called virtue, but whenever I can lend a hand to anyone, I feel obliged to do it. Helpfulness is my idea of holiness.

These remarks serve to give some inexact hints of the leading points of difference between the two great schools of morals. In general, one relies upon moral insight, the other upon mental foresight. The one depends upon an intuition of nature, the other upon an apprehension of results. Yet though each party has held the other in detestation, still neither, when pressed by argument, has been able to avoid assuming the positions of the other. Dr. Whewell, in his Elements of Morality, a work meant to be an antidote to Paley, after insisting upon the degrading tendencies of the happiness system, reasons thus: "The object of the supreme rule of human action is spoken of as the true end of human action, the ultimate or supreme good, the summum bonum" (73). What is that supreme good? He says, "Happiness is conceived as necessarily an ultimate object of action." "The desire of happiness is the supreme desire."

"Happiness is our being's end and aim" (544).

"The supreme

object of human action is happiness" (573). Now as the supreme rule derives its value and validity from the supreme end, it follows that in Dr. Whewell's mind happiness legitimates action; which is unmixed Benthamism.

On the other hand, Mr. Mill, who is the great apostle of utilitarianism, after a multitude of sharp hits at his predecessors for paying so little attention to the subjective effects of action, finally complains of Bentham, that. "Man is never recognized by him as a being capable of pursuing spiritual perfection as an end, of desiring for its own sake the conformity of his character to his standard of excellence without hope of good or fear of evil from other sources than his own inward consciousness" (Dissertations and Discussions, vol. i, p. 384). This is everything but utilitarianism.

This mutual assumption of each other's position leads us to suspect that both parties are right and both are wrong. There is a moral instinct, but its province has been extended much too far. Considerations of advantage, on the other hand, do play an important part in our moral judgments, but do not create our moral nature. The intuitionist has said a great deal about the "eternal distinction between right and wrong," of "virtue, not happiness, as the end of man;" in all of which there is far more of rhetoric than of reason. The utilitarian, on the other hand, while unquestionably right in testing his code by the canon of consequences, has always been prone to regard the moral instinct as without ethical authority, but as being the result of prejudice or the product of contagion. We do not believe that our moral convictions are caught like the measles, no more do we believe that conscience can utter infallible oracles on every question proposed to it. For the control of life intuition is blind without the guidance of utility; and utility is the purest selfishness apart from moral intuition. To determine if possible the value and limitations of each method, is the purpose of this essay.

Each party has a strong word to utter in its own behalf. Men are judged in their motives without any estimate of results. We contemplate some example of lofty devotion to duty; and at once we clap our hands and cry, well done. John in Herod's

court rebuking the licentious king, wins our admiration before we have considered the consequences of the rebuke; and when a little later we see him in Herod's prison, bowing his neck to the sharp stroke which falls flashing down, we do not retract our praise. When Arnold Winkelried gathers in his side the sheaf of Austrian spears, we instinctively yield our admiration without thought of the victory which his sacrifice secured for Switzerland. Who thinks less of the three hundred who held the pass at Thermopyla because they were overborne and slain? The praise and honor we accord to Luther depend in no wise upon the good that flowed from his protest. Had the church crushed him, as it did Huss a hundred years before, it would not have affected our decision. Suppose, on the other hand, that the course of Nero were proved to have caused great good to modern Europe, still we should think no better of him. We judge persons, if we are sure of their motives, without thinking of results; and results are powerless to reverse our decision. The only use we make of consequences is to arrive at motives; we reason upon what a man did to find his motive in doing it; but the motive known, the judgment is instinctive and irreversible. This is not a question of argument, but a plain matter of fact. Despots in their mad ambition have struck blows that freed nations; and wicked men often prove blessings, as thunder storms clear the air. But we think no more kindly of the tyrants for the unintended good; nor do we remove our condemnation from wicked men because God makes their wrath to praise him. Demosthenes failed to secure Grecian unity and liberty; but his failure does not diminish our admiration. Indeed, never does he seem so grand a figure as after that fatal day at Cheronæa, while he stood amid the wreck of baffled plans with his country falling in ruins around him. Washington secured American independence; but it is not his success which we reverence. Success never won the reverence of a single human conscience, and never will. We judge no man by what he did, but by what he meant to do, and by the principle of action that ruled him. The only way in which a judgment of a person is ever modified, is by showing that he was moved by other motives than those we had attributed to him. Richard III. was a monster and is a monster forevermore.

Facts such as these are offered by the intuitionist to prove that consequences are not the standard of moral judgments.

On the other hand, the utilitarian shows that moral codes are constantly changing, so that the conscientious practices of one age are often the detestation of the next. As consequences manifest themselves moral judgments are reversed. Many things once thought righteous are now viewed with abhorrence. The asceticism of the early ages, and the deeds of the Inquisition, have had the sanction of conscience. Individual experience is a collection of mistakes; and the history of the race is mainly a record of measures once thought righteous, but which, when weighed in the balance of consequences, were found wanting. Indiscriminate alms-giving had the sanction of conscience until political economy by its irresistible reasoning and its still more irresistible facts showed its pernicious tendency. Now from these undoubted facts two things clearly appear; first, if conscience is a guide to action, it is an altogether unreliable one, and second, conscience can never maintain its authority against known inutility.

From data like these the utilitarian argues, that consequences furnish the only trustworthy test of moral judgments.

A glance at these conflicting arguments will serve to show that their opposition is rather seeming than real. The arguments of the intuitionist all relate to moral judgments upon persons, those of the utilitarian only to moral judgments upɔn actions. But abstract action has no moral quality at all. Our moral judgments are really upon persons, and never upon things. We never praise the sunshine or the rain, though they are of the greatest advantage. We never condemn the fire or the torrent, which sweeps life and property away. Impersonal agents may produce the highest good or the greatest mischief; but they never win our approval or receive our condemnation. These are reserved for personal agents only. Not even the acts of a person are really praised or blamed: it is the person doing those acts. He it is that is base or noble; he it is that is righteous or wicked. Often indeed we do speak of an action as good or bad, but in every such case the condemnation is really bestowed upon the actor, and is allowed to flow from him over the act. This is plain enough; for take the worst