§ 413. Diversities in moral decisions dependent on differences in the amount of knowledge.

Diversities in the decisions of conscience will depend, in the first place, on differences in the amount of knowledge, whether such differences in knowledge be owing to differences of intellective power or to any other cause In other words, the conscience may be led astray, so far as to decide otherwise than it would under other circumstances, either by a want of facts, or by a false perception and estimate of facts. This simple statement, if properly applied, can hardly fail to explain numerous mistaken moral judgments, which have been adduced in opposition to the doctrine of a conscience.

We may illustrate this view of the subject by a case of this kind. Two men are required to give an opinion on some question which involves moral duty. The question" we will suppose to be, whether it would be right, in a supposed case, to attempt a revolution in the civil government. Of these two individuals one will pronounce it to be right, the other will pronounce it to be wrong.-It is admitted that we have here a manifested or apparent deviation in the moral action. At the same time, it is unquestionably the fact, that it is not owing to a difference of structure in their moral nature, but rather to a difference in their perceptive and comparing powers.

The one who pronounces the attempt to be right, in consequence of his greater reach of thought, is able to foresee, after the first convulsive struggles, the subsidence of the angry passions into a state of permanent quiet, and the reorganization of the convulsed frame of society into greater strength and beauty. With these views he thinks it right to attempt to introduce a change into the government of the country. The other, whose intellectual vision is more limited, unable to extend the perceptive eye into the future, sees only the evils of the present moment; the discord and clamour, the breaking up of old habits and associations, the agony, and the blood. With these views he thinks it would be wrong to attempt the change in question. The moral nature, in each instance, pronounces according to the light which is placed before it; and in each case does what it would naturally be expected to do

The want of uniformity in this case, so far from being an evidence, as some seem to suppose, that there are no good grounds for the doctrine of a moral sense, is rather an evidence of the contrary. Although there is not an external or apparent uniformity, there is a uniformity in principle; that is to say, the conscience in each case decides according to the facts before it, which is the only proper ground of decision.

§ 414. Of diversities in moral judgment in connexion with differences in civil and political institutions.

We may reasonable expect, in the second place, to find diversities and occasional oppositions of moral judgment, in connexion with differences in civil and political institutions. This statement might be illustrated by numerous instances from history. The objectors to a moral nature maintain, that theft or the unlawfully taking of the property of another is a crime; and that conscience, if it exists as a part of the mental constitution, will not fail to condemn it universally. And, in connexion with this, they bring forward the fact, that in some countries theft, instead of being condemned as it should be, prevails very much, and is scarcely regarded as a crime.

Under this head we may properly notice, in particular, the statement made by travellers, that some Savage tribes are very much given to theft. Captain Cook informs us, that when he visited the Sandwich Islands in 1778, the inhabitants exhibited a thievish disposition, taking everything which came within their reach. In explanation of this statement, it is to be remarked, first, that the idea of theft involves the idea of property; and that the right of property is more or less strict and absolute in different countries and under different political systems. In consequence of the richness of their soil and the favourable nature of their climate, there is no question that the right of property was held by the Sandwich Islanders to be less strict and exclusive than it is found to be in less productive countries. The familiar distinction of MEUM and TUUM, of our own and another's, was not so clearly drawn and so strenuously adhered to as it generally is in civilized nations; and the probability is, that nearly all the

various forms of property were held in common. As the right of property was in their estimation less strict, the violation of it was less criminal; and they did not look upon the offender with that decided disapprobation which in other places would attach to him in taking the same articles. They probably regarded him with nearly the same feelings with which we regard a man who, in passing through an orchard that belongs to us, takes a few apples, or who occasionally draws water from our well. He takes our property, it is true; but as the right of property in those cases is held by common consent to be a loose or mitigated one, we do not call it theft nor regard it as criminal.

And further, in looking at Captain Cook's account a little more minutely, we see evidence in the narration itself of the correctness of this view. "At first," he says,

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on entering the ship, they endeavoured to steal everything they came near, or rather to take it openly, as what we either should not resent or not hinder." In another place he says, in explanation of their conduct, "they thought they had a right to everything they could lay their hands on." We learn also, that, after they were made to understand the English notions of property, and the penalty attached to a violation of it, they soon laid aside such conduct.-It is obvious, if they had attached the same ideas to taking property which we attach to stealing, they would not have taken it openly, as much so as if they supposed they either had a right to it, or that the owners would not resent or hinder their taking it.

§ 415. Of diversities and obliquities of moral judgment in connexion with speculative opinions.

We may reasonably expect, in the third place, that there will be diversities of moral judgment, based upon diversities in important speculative opinions in morals, politics, and religion, and, in truth, upon almost any subject. Some years since the speculative opinion seems to have been prevalent through nearly the whole of the civilized world, that the Negroes were an inferior race, located in the graduation of rank somewhere between the brute animals and man. This was the speculative belief. And what has been the consequence? The fires of deso

lation have been kindled upon the coast of Africa; villages and towns have been destroyed; a continual war has been kept up among the native tribes; and probably forty millions of persons have been torn away from their native country, and consigned to perpetual slavery.

While this erroneous speculative opinion held possession, to a considerable extent, of the minds of men, the authority of conscience was paralyzed; her voice, if it was heard at all, was feeble, and scarcely excited notice. And why should it be otherwise? If the Negroes are truly an inferior race to white men, darkened in intellect and imbruted in the affections, incapable of taking care of themselves, and still more of any intellectual and social advancement, what harm is there in bringing them into vassalage, and making them grind, like the brute animals to which they are so nearly related, in the prisonhouse of the more favoured species? The difficulty is not so much with the conscience as with the erroneous opinion.

We learn from the Memoirs of the Rev. John Newton, of England, a man as much distinguished for his piety as for his intelligence and eloquence, that he was for some years personally engaged in the Slave Trade; and that, too, after he had professed, and to all appearance with great sincerity, to be guided by the principles of the Christian religion. Such were the prevalent notions in regard to the blacks, that the traffic does not appear to have occurred to him as being morally wrong. He expressly says: "During the time I was engaged in the Slave Trade, I never had the least scruple of its lawfulness." He pursued it without any of those compunctious visitings, which could not fail to have troubled him if he had regarded them, as surely they ought to be regarded, as children of the same common parent, and as participators, in the view of unprejudiced justice, in the same common inheritance of natural rights.

416. Further illustrations of the influence of wrong speculative opinions.

The speculative opinion has formerly existed very extensively, and does still to some degree, that the civil au

thority has a right, in relation to its own subjects, to exact conformity in the matters of religion. And the result has been, that thousands and hundreds of thousands, at various times and in different countries, have been subjected to imprisonment, the torture, exile, and death. And those who have been the leading agents in these horrible transactions, from the persecutors of the Primitive Christians down to the Lauds and Bonners of later times, have perpetrated them, in their own estimation, with washed hands and a pure heart. They have gone from the Oratory to the dungeon of the Inquisition; they have, with unquestionable sincerity, looked up to Heaven for a blessing, as they have applied to their mangled victims the screw and the wheel of torture; they have arisen from the knee of supplication to kindle with a pious haste the fires of Smithfield, and to wield the exterminating sword of the St. Bartholomew. They have done all this merely in consequence of entertaining a wrong speculative opinion conscientiously.

417. Influence of early associations on moral judgments.

Our moral judgments, in the fourth place, are sometimes perplexed and led in a direction different from what they would otherwise be, by means of early associations. -The principle of association does not operate upon the moral capacity directly; it operates indirectly with considerable influence. When a particular action is to be judged of, it calls up in the minds of different individuals different and distinct series of accessory circumstances. It has the effect to place the thing, intellectually consided, in a different position. This difference in the tendencies of the associating principle can hardly fail to have considerable effect in modifying the sentiment of approbation or disapprobation resulting from the consideration of any particular action.

Accordingly, when vices are committed by near friends, by a brother or a parent, although they fill us with the deepest grief, (perhaps much greater than we should feel in the case of those who did not sustain so near a relation,) it is frequently the case that they do not excite within us such abhorrence of the actual guilt as we should be