MURALS is a word used in several different senses, which it is desirable to distinguish 1. It has been employ ed, together with the expressions wool plobsophy and moral s•ience, to denote) the whole field of knowledge relating primarily to the mind of man ; and in this sense his co-extensive with the word metaphysics. To this use of the word there are many objections ; and it has accordingly now almost entirely ceased. 2. Murals, as well as the expressions mural plaboophy and mo at science, denotes specially the science of what is called inan's duty, what he ought and ought not to think, feel, say, do. In this sense of the word, morals is one department of metaphysics; mental philosophy, or niental science, or psychology (which, as we shell see presently. is a necessary foundation for morals), being another depart ment. This is in every way the most convenient use of the word, and Is now generally sanctioned by custom. In this sense of the word morals, it is convertible with ethics and with deontolvy, a word coined by Mr. Bentham. 3. Murals and ethics are at the same time names for the art correepon(Lng to the science which has just been spoken of, the art of pertorming one's duty, or (an it is generally described) the art of living a good and a happy life. The art and the science being coextenaive, and differing only in this. that the same subjectematter is viewed from different points, the indiscriminate application of the same term to both engenders no confusion worthy of notice. 4. Mora/s Is, in current couversatien, synonymous with mor ; thus denoting not only the science and the art, but also what is the subject-matter both of the one and of the other.
It is the purpose of this article to give a brief general account of morals, considered as the science of man s duty.
Morals then is a name for the science which teaches what it is man's duty to do and not to do, or (changing the phrase) what be ought and ought not to do ; or again, whet it is respectively right and wrong for him to do; or (to resort to yet another change of phrase) which teaches what is respectively virtue and vice Our account of the 'science must necessarily commence with an explanation of this, Its fundamental idea, which thus expressed in so many different ways.
It is man's duty to do, or he ought to do, or it is right that lie should do, or lastly, that is virtue, which, on the most general view possible of the tendencies of a disposition or an action, conduces most to the happiness of mankind. That which of any two acts thus viewed, conduces the less to this happiness, it is his duty not to du; or he ought not to do, or it is wrong for him to do, or lastly is vice. So, aLsolutely and unconditionally, of any disposition or action which tends, on the whole, to cause unhappiness. It in generally stated, in consistency with this explanation, that conduciveness to the general happinees of mankind is the criterion of duty or virtue.
Two quest.ons now arise, to which, before we proceed further, some sort of answer must Le given. The answers to these questions will lead us to separate the science of morals from two other sciences with which it Is often more or less confounded, namely, mental science, or psychology, and theology, and also to point out the relations in which it stands to these sciences. The two questions are,—what does human happiness consist of ? and what renders the pursuit of human happiness man's duty ? We shall answer the second of these questions first. It is man's duty to strive to increase the general amount of human happiness, because ho knows, both from the adaptation of the external world to that end, and from express revelation of God's will, that God desires the happiness of mankind. The full and detailed establishment of this proposition belongs to theology, in its tw'o departments of natural and revealed religion. Thus is morals connected with theology. We have said that their provinces have been often more or less confounded, and this has taken place principally in two ways. God having revealed, in a general manner, the assignment of rewards and punishments in a future life to the performance of duty and its violation in this seine writers, as Paley for instance (who defines virtue as " the doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of ever lasting happiness" ), have directly referred virtue to an expectation of these rewards and punishments, and, instead of treating theta as some thing extraneous and accidental, have introduced them as essentials into the definition of morality. Now morals has nothing to do with these rewards and punishments further than to determine what are the dispositions and actions to which they are respectively assigned; and this is determined altogether iudependentiy of the rewards and punish ments themselves. The other way in which the provinces of morals and theology have been confounded (and here the confusion is com plete) is by deriving all duty directly from the revealed will of God. Those who consult the Bible only as being the depository of God's revealed will, for a completer enumeration of their duties, clearly reject morals as an independent science, and merge it entirely in theology. It is needless to observe that the Bible, which, as Mr. Burke observes in a well known passage, " is not one summary of doc trines regularly digested, in which a man could not mistake his way," cannot take the place of, any more than it can be superseded by, a science which systematically treats duty on the principle of conduciveneee to the general happiness of mankind.