A great number of the existing moral rules can be traced to a distinct historical origin, proving still more decisively that they are not the suggestions of a universal instinct of the human mind. The Mohammedan code of morals came from Mohammed; Confucius was the moral legislator of one large section of the Chinese. The making of the marriage tie irrevocable in Christendom was an exercise of papal authority in the 13th c., and has since been repealed in some Protestant countries, although retained in Catholic states. See DIVORCE, MARRIAGE. The sentiment which forbids the holding of human beings as slaves is chiefly the growth of the last two or three centuries.
Although the doctrine of intuitive morality is, in this view, denied, it is still admitted that there is such a power in the mind as conscience, which warns us when we are doing wrong, and is to a certain extent a force to make us do right. But it cannot be shown that we are born with any such principle, combining both enlightenment and motive power. Conscience is a growth. There are in our constitution certain primitive impulses that so far coincide with what is our duty, and therefore contribute to the formation of the conscience; these are principally self-preservation, or a regard to our selves, and sympathy, or a regard to others. There are many duties that we are prompted to for our own interest, such as telling the truth, in order that people may confide in us; obeying the laws, to avoid punishment, etc. But we cannot perform all Our social duties if we look merely to ourselves. We must, in addition to prudence,. have a source of disinterested action, inducing us both to avoid injuring our fellow beings in the promotion of our own selfishness, and occasionally to sacrifice ourselves. for the sake of others. Such a principle exists in our mental nature, although not of equal strength in all minds. Being provided with these two primitive springs of action, we are susceptible of being educated to the sense of moral obligation. The child is.
first taught obedience by penalties, and is made to associate pain with forbidden actions. This is the germ of conscience. Habits of avoiding what is prohibited under penalties are gradually formed, and the sense of authority and law is thereby acquired. When the powers of observation and reason come to maturity, the individual sees why the restrictions of duty have been imposed, and is then ready of his own accord, and. apart from the fear of punishment, to behave rightly. The conscience, grounded on fear, then becomes the conscience grounded on spontaneOus approval.
Conscience thus follows, and does not precede, the experience of human authority. Authority, sanctioned by punishment, is the type and the starting-point, even when the conscience takes an independent flight, and adopts rules for itself different from those that entered into its education. The great mass of human beings have nothing more than the slavish conscience, or the habits imparted by the exercise of the parental and public authority, which shows what is the most natural foundation of moral sentiment. The persons that judge of right for themselves, instead of implicitly receiving the maxims.peculiar -to the society where they grow up, are o few as to be the exception everywhere; their conscience does not prove what is the usual endowment of human nature in this respect.
Inquiries of the nature of those above sketched, proceed upon the assumption that moral distinctions have their ground in the constitution, of the world and of man's nature, and may be discovered by the exercise of human reason, as the other laws of the universe are. But practically, the rules of morality have, in almost all communities, been more or less dependent upon a belief in divine laws supernaturally revealed. The relation of these to scientific ethics will be considered under REVELATION.