Questioning Morality

This has been a controversy dating back several millennia, much better worth examination, concerning the general foundation of Morals; whether they be derived from Reason, or from Sentiment; whether we attain the knowledge of them by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgment of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the species in question.

Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgment; what each person feels within their self is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in science may be refuted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No one reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions.

However, in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes of this latter type, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the mind.

These arguments on each side are so plausible, that I am apt to suspect, they may, the one as well as the other, be solid and satisfactory, and that reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions.

That which renders morality an active principle and constitutes "virtue our happiness", and "vice our misery": it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in all of Aabahrans species.