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Relations of Intelligence and Moral Feeling.

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master to itself. Were we disposed to place paradox against paradox, we might affirm, according to Mr. Buckle's method, that the 'more powerful' cause of civilization is desire, for it is older than every other, and brings every other into play. But does any man need to be reminded of what desire would be without intelligence? No, no more than any man needs to be reminded of what intelligence would be without desire.

Mr. Buckle will probably be prepared to say, admitting all this, the intellect when once brought into action seizes the sceptre, and acquits itself as a sovereign. It may seem to be called forth as a servant, but it soon becomes master, and even the causes which evoked it sink into subordination at its bidding. But is the case really so? We think not.

It is not only true that spiritual things will only be discerned. by spiritual men, it is no less true that moral truth will never be seen in its real significance by men of low moral feeling. Even yet, the intellect has its dependencies as well as its power. The time, in fact, never comes in which the relation between feeling and intellect ceases to be reciprocal. In regard to moral truth the heart continues to be as great a discoverer as the head. It is often with men, as it is commonly with women, that intuitive feeling leads to truth much more directly and surely than the intricate processes of the reason. We know that men are often worse than their principles, it would be sad if they could at no time be better; and the man who is better than his principles today, is in the way to have better principles to-morrow. We are firm believers in the profound wisdom of the saying, 'if a man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.' All Mr. Buckle's discovery, therefore, about the dependence of moral feeling on intelligence is beside the matter. No man of sense ever doubted it. Without intelligence moral feeling could not exist; but when this feeling and the intellect once begin to act, the action between the two continues to be that of action and reaction. To represent moral feeling as though it were mere feeling is to mislead. It is never so. Conscience is the term we use to denote that special kind of intelligence by which such feeling is always regulated. When we speak of an 'enlightened' conscience, we speak of a conscience stored with the kind of truth proper to it. There is no combination of influences in the human soul more beautiful than that which Mr. Buckle overlooks when he makes even moral truth to be a simple product of the intellect. But for the moral nature of the man the intellect could never know what moral truth means. It is the delicate, but real and inevitable blending of the intelligence and sympathy of the soul in relation to all such questions that

constitutes the basis of its responsibility. It may be true that the great principles of morality are few and immutable, and that no great addition has been made to them since their announcement in the remote ages of the world. But what those principles really include, how to see and appreciate all their finer elements, and where and how they should be applied-these considerations present a field in which every man feels he has much to learn, and in which society has much to learn, and in this direction the intellect, so long as it is alone, remains stationary. It is not in

its nature that it should move a step. The principles of morality, like the laws of nature, have been the same from the beginning; but man's apprehension of the laws of nature has not been always the same, nor has his apprehension of the principles of morality been the same. The power to discern the deeper meaning of a moral precept, and the disposition to obey it, come from the moral side of our nature. The great want of the world is not so much more knowledge, as the disposition to make a better use of the knowledge of which it is possessed. There is room for all men to become in this respect what a few men only have been, and there is room for the few of the future to be wiser than the few of the past. All moral progress is of this complexion; it is a progress of the sympathy as truly as of the intelligence. The two go together, but the intelligence depends largely on the sympathy. It is with the principles of morals as with the principles of taste-men are educated into them. They are before all alike, but they are not seen alike by all. It is not thus with natural science, where the intellect alone is concerned; the assumption accordingly that moral truths are stationary,' and so can be no cause of 'progress,' is untenable. In a sense they are so, but in a very important sense, and in a sense bearing strongly on this subject, they are not so.

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But these more profound relations of his subject are utterly ignored by Mr. Buckle. He has no faith in the progressive morality of the race. Knowledge will increase. This will show increasingly that virtue, as it is called, is economical, and that vice, as it is called, is costly. As this selfish arithmetic shall advance towards maturity, the conduct accounted virtuous will become more common, and the conduct accounted vicious will become more rare. But men will not in reality be more moral. There will be progress, but it will not consist in improved moral feeling; it will consist simply in a more expert power of calculation upon questions of gain and loss. In support of this representation, which Mr. Buckle may well describe as 'very unpalatable,' our attention is directed to the history of religious persecution and the history of war. There is less persecution and less war than formerly. But this change has not come

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Nothing of the

Hence

because men are morally better than they were. sort. Circumstances have arisen to show that such usages are troublesome, costly, do not yield any adequate return. the disposition to avoid them. It is not that improved feeling has prepared men for seeing more clearly the injustice and inhumanity of such customs.

But how does Mr. Buckle attempt to sustain his position in regard to persecution? Moral sincerity, he alleges, is no security against persecution; it rather ensures it. Among the Roman emperors, the most virtuous, such as Marcus Aurelius, were the most disposed towards that use of their power. So in the history of Spain and of other countries. Now this is a grave fact, and must be freely admitted. But the inferences which Mr. Buckle deduces from it are not so certain. One of these, as we

have said, is, that the great antagonist of intolerance is not humanity, but knowledge. What the knowledge is which has done so much more than humanity towards abating this evil, we are not told. The knowledge meant, we suppose, is that general knowledge, which has tended so strongly in recent times to depress the power of the priest, and to elevate the power of the magistrate-giving a greater influence to the natural sentiments of men, at the cost of the restrictions so long imposed upon them by ecclesiastical authority. But what have we in the growing power of the natural sentiments of man, as man, but the growing powers of moral feeling? We must confess we do not envy the man who can affect to separate between the accidents of natural knowledge in this case, and the operations of moral feeling, so as to say in the most absolute terms, that all has come from the former cause, and really nothing from the latter. For our part, we could by no means take upon us to say from which source the greater influence has come; we only feel sure that they must have acted together, and that the product is their joint product. Mr. Buckle, however, insists that men see no more of the wickedness of persecution now than in former times. They are not at all more virtuous, they are only more calculating. But who will believe him? Who can fail to regret that such a mind, to bolster up its own sickly theories, should be disposed in this manner to attribute everything elevated in the history of our nature, not merely to one simple quality, but to a quality destitute of all nobleness?

Every one knows that in physics, phenomena which are always changing, are governed by laws which do not change; and that seeming irregularities, which proceed from lesser laws, are controlled into ultimate regularity by greater. But the attempts which have been made by the Germans to transfer this method of reasoning from physics to metaphysics, and from

nature to society, have led to much castle-building, and to very little truth. The cases are many in which we cannot reason safely from the laws of matter to those of mind, and this is one of them. The extravagance to which a disposition to reason after this manner has led Mr. Buckle is almost incredible. For let it be for a moment ceded to him that knowledge is more powerful' as an agent of civilization than moral feeling-does it follow that moral feeling does nothing because it does not do everything-or that it does not do the lesser part because it does not do the greater. Yet, strange to say, Mr. Buckle's whole theory requires that you should cede him this inference. Deny him this, and the whole fabric he has reared tumbles to the ground. An artist mixes yellow and blue upon his pallet to make a green. The green required is a dark green, in which the blue predominates. Are we to say, because the blue predominates in that green, that the yellow did nothing towards making it? Or inverse the proportions. The green required is a light green, in which the yellow predominates. Are we now to say because the yellow predominates in that green, the blue does nothing towards making it? A fabric is wrought up from threads of many colours, but the more powerful' colour, when the whole is seen at a distance, is red. Should we here say that the red alone has made that colour, and infer that the other colours, seeing they are subordinate, have done nothing towards making it? Mr. Buckle may discourse for ever about fluctuating phenomena as subject to fixed laws, and the apparently irregular as subject to the regular, but the common-sense view of such facts will remain undisturbed; and unpalatable as such an assertion may be, we venture to affirm that his attempt to connect such reasoning with the subjects of which he treats in this volume will be so much wasted ingenuity. Mr. Buckle assumes that wars have been less frequent in recent times than in past ages. But inasmuch as all comparisons of this nature must cover large spaces of time, there is room to question what is here taken for granted. There is also abundant room to question whether war be the unmixed evil which Mr Buckle supposes. Every man deserving the name of a thinker, we should have thought, must be aware that war may have its mission for good as well as evil. Often it prevents much good, and inflicts much evil; but there are cases in which it prevents evil, and confers good. It would not be difficult to show that a people may evince a thorough distaste for war from tendencies so low, sensual, selfish, and corrupt, that even a state of war would be an improvement on a form of civilization so contemptible and putrid. But let these things pass.

In attempting to show that war has been diminished by the

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increase of knowledge, and not by improved moral feeling, Mr. Buckle appeals to facts which are supposed to warrant that opinion. He reminds us that, as knowledge increases, the intellectual classes become strong at the cost of the military class. With this change come manufactures, trade, commerce, law, literature, science, philosophy, diplomacy. All these bring, more or less, of a pacific influence. Now the assumption of our author at this point is, that all these new influences come into play purely from intellectual, and not at all from moral causes. But how few will be prepared to believe this? Every thoughtful man, rejoins Mr. Buckle, ought to believe it, for I am prepared to show that the great cause of this change may be seen in the invention of gunpowder, in the progress of political economy, and in locomotion by steam. The invention of gunpowder increased the complication and cost of the military art. Soldiering, in place of being a part of every man's education, passed by degrees into the hands of mercenaries and of standing armies. Thus labour was divided, and the bulk of the people were no longer diverted from civil pursuits by military exercises; and so pacific tastes and occupations gained upon the warlike. Political economy tended to the same result by showing how much more nations might hope to gain by commercial interchange than by international strife. Now need we say that all these points may be ceded, and nothing be done towards establishing Mr. Buckle's theory. That the increase of the intellectual and industrial classes is favourable to peace, and that the progress of intelligence is favourable to that increase, no man will hesitate to admit. The point needing proof is, that this change has come wholly from the causes mentioned, and in no degree because men have learnt to reason more generously, and to feel more humanely, in regard to war. By this time our readers will not expect us to say that Mr. Buckle has given us this proof. He has done nothing of the kind. The same remark is applicable to his observations concerning the social influence of locomotion by steam. No one questions the reality of that influence. It works with the better moral feeling of society, it does not preclude it; it would not be what it is without it. To say that international prejudice is weakened, and that international good-feeling is strengthened, by such means, and to say in the same breath, that this good feeling has nothing to do with social progress-what is this? Is it not to offend against common sense? Apart from causes beyond the intellect, the world would never have known what locomotion means.

One grand maxim with Mr. Buckle is, that the totality of human actions' comes from the 'totality of human knowledge'— that is, the good or bad of society at large comes from the know

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