with the sentiment that nobleness inspires. Where a more than ordinary share of self-denying affection, of disinterested labour and endurance, or of superiority to common weaknesses, has been displayed, the effect is of the noble kind, in whatever walk of life it may occur.

Of the various duties involved in the primary morality, man- ♦ kind have agreed to prefer the display of high integrity as an example of nobleness. An adherence to truth, consistency, justice, and rigorous uniformity of proceedings, if deeply pervading the character, and shewing itself in trying occasions, is an impressive spectacle. It does not strike the generality of men quite so strongly as high displays of natural tenderness and self-denying affection, but there is in the human mind a deep and grateful response to the maintenance of high integrity. Men that have stood fast to their sense of truth through every trial, are ever esteemed noble. The conduct of Socrates, in refusing, at the peril of his life, to put an illegal question to the vote before the Athenian Assembly, was a foreshadowing of the moral greatness of his closing career.

The respect for one's human dignity, when carried to a commanding pitch, earns the praise of nobleness.

By dignity, we understand the employment of the being upon objects suited to its various functions, and especially its higher functions, or those that remove it from the lower orders of creatures, and bring it nearer to our conception of superior natures. Every creature possesses, along with its natural constitution, a sense of what that constitution is fit for, and what will put its capacities to the best account; and with this sense there is a certain feeling of the high propriety, if not obligation, so to employ itself. As our knowledge of character improves, we are better able to appreciate this fitness, and to feel the corresponding obligation. It is violated in human beings by excessive indulgence in mere sensuality, and by a grovelling turn of mind; it is also violated in the exclusive devotion of the body to mechanical drudgery, or of the mind to gain; and when these things are necessities of self-preservation or social duty, the dignity of man requires that there should be occasional cessations from such engrossments, that a more elevating bent may be given to the faculties: hence the education of early years, and the institutions where grown-up life is spent, ought to provide for a discipline and cultivation of the intellect, tastes, and the elevating sentiments of men and women. This is to respect the dignity of human nature; for we can hardly conceive of a secure or happy existence, where the largest regions of human activity are allowed to run utterly wild.

All these forms of nobleness imply more or less the display of moral power; they approach to what is called the moral sublime. They demand either great strength, or great concentration of character, and may not be within the reach of every one. There is, however, a species of the fascinating virtues dependent for their interest on a totally different sentiment; those, namely, connected with the notion of purity. This is a very favourite and much-cherished feeling with all mankind, but it has had the most arbitrary and fantastical applications. It would be impossible to enumerate all the purities and purisms that have taken root among the likings of men, and have been maintained with an eagerness and an energy that martyrdom would not have been able to quench. We shall merely adduce a few examples, by way of shewing that this sentiment may attach itself to very noble and to very trivial and obnoxious things.

We have already had occasion to glance at the idea of purity in conduct, as implying the absence of all motives of an inferior or objectionable kind, an idea also attaching to affections, attachments, and sentiments in general. Pure love must be free from self, and there is a certain notion of purity associated with the affection between the sexes in the case when the bodily appetites do not enter into its composition. Pure religion is considered to have the same freedom from everything extraneous to the true quality of religious reverence. We hear also of a pure love of knowledge or of truth-implying not merely the exclusion of error or falsehood, but the absence of utilitarian ends. Mathematicians have sometimes had a fascination for what they called pure geometry, or a system of geometrical doctrines founded upon purely rational considerations, and with no reference to outward experience. The phrase 'pure reason' has currency among metaphysicians, as opposed to the practical reason that must reign in human affairs, where compromise and surrender become necessary. Purity is also applied to express forms of art as well as of science. And to descend from the high regions of mind, we have such cases as purity of blood and race, purity of honour and reputation, purity of connections, and many other kinds. The ceremonial of the Oriental religions has been always strongly tinctured with arbitrary notions of purity, extending from the most trivial observances to the most serious restraints of human liberty.

It must be apparent that these instances point to a considerable intensity of the sentiment of the pure in the minds of men, and indicate that attachment to purity is always accounted a species of nobleness and beauty in conduct. But at the same time, it is

necessary, for the sake of the primary morality and the real interests of mankind, that each case of alleged purity should be settled on its merits, and that mere taste should not determine what is to be obligatory in conduct or action. Purity is a very different thing from morality.

A different class of actions possessing the attractiveness and fascination that we are now considering, may be comprehended under the designation of humility. This virtue, reduced to its strict rendering, alludes always to the suppression of egotism in some form or other. As a mere feeling or sentiment, it is shewn in a habitually modest, unobtrusive, unpretending demeanour; as a virtue improved by intellectual cultivation, it means an exact appreciation of worth and capacity both in self and in others. It is violated when one's own pretensions to any kind of merit, reward, or authority, are unduly exalted, or any second party's pretensions depressed. There is always a gratifying effect produced by one's stopping short at the right point in claiming either influence or advantage; whereas any one interfering beyond his capacity or just rights, in any branch of affairs, is sure to cause a distaste in the minds of the onlookers. The ramifications of this kind of humility are endless; but from its being a high combination of profound judgment with moral self-repression, it is not a common virtue. The incapacity of men to see their own defects or the limits of their own capacity, is proverbial; one reason lies in the real difficulty of the case, apart altogether from personal bias. It requires either unusually native gifts, or extensive study, or both, to understand the characters and capacities of men, so as to define their value for any given purpose: and if we are apt to give undue preferences in cases where we have no bias, no wonder that we do so where there is a very strong bias. Το overcome the intellectual difficulties of carrying out humility in perfection, the moralist has had no resource but to impress the duty of forming a low estimate of self generally, and of being modest in the assertion of all pretensions alike, whether well or ill founded. This must be admitted to be a clumsy solution at best; but there is no alternative between it and the one that requires us to comply to the full with the Delphic injunction: 'Know thyself.' Perfect humility can be based on nothing less than perfect self-knowledge.

Such are a few of the most notable of the virtues prized among men for their nobleness, beauty, or fascination, and for the charm and interest that they spread over the face of human life. After what we have urged as to the inexpediency and impropriety of

setting the secondary virtues on the same footing of obligation with the primary, we need hardly say, that there is still less ground for exacting, as an indispensable duty, any one species of nobleness. There are motives and inducements to the cultivation of this quality, and these ought to be urged with all the impressiveness that the case demands; but imperative dictation on such a point is not to be thought of. The business of the moralist lies rather in enforcing the primary morality, and in maintaining its right of precedence over this more showy and attractive class of virtues.

The two last-described species of nobleness, purity and humility, tread closely on the graces, accomplishments, and artistic refinements conceived purely for the sake of adorning human life. We may remark also of nobleness, that it is the quality that, along with the passion of love, yields the poetical, romantic, and theatrical phases of character and conduct. Affection elevated to devotion, intense and imposing moral energy, magnanimity, purity, and humility, are among the qualities that give a charm both to history and romance; a charm that is produced in a less degree by more useful benevolence, and still less by the virtues indispensable to individual and social existence. This opposition between the useful and the attractive, one of the gravest facts of creation, recurs again and again to the attention of the moralist.

IX. Our attempt to define the end of morality has thus led us to distinguish three distinct classes of ends, differing in the degree of their urgency and necessity, all which have to be kept in view in determining the conduct more or less imperative on human beings in virtue of their human nature, and in order to do justice to the requirements of that nature. Security, benevolence, nobleness, are three very distinct ends, but they are all justified by the consideration of what is good for humanity on the whole. Three distinct classes of duties are thus called into being; and these duties are to be determined by a strict investigation of the means suitable to the attainment of the respective ends. The sciences that expound the consequences of human actions upon human beings ought to be referred to, to indicate by what methods these desirable objects are to be compassed; and the moralist is bound to use this and every other resource for obtaining the very best methods, having a view both to the ends and to the nature of man as the agent to execute them. The greatest possible results with the least possible expenditure of labour, must be the aim here, as in all other regions of practice.

X. The foregoing statements will indicate the spirit of our attempt to correct and extend the reasonings of Paley on the leading questions of morality. In following out the train of thought thus briefly sketched, we shall have to supply what appears to us defective, more especially in his chapters on the Moral Sense, on Moral Obligation, and on Human Happiness; and there will still remain some important matters to be added by way of supplement to the whole.]