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Nor is the intuitive philosophy, rightly presented, at all open to the repeated taunts of Bentham, that each individual by a blind irrational power may thus pretend to decide what is right, and capriciously lay down a law absolute for himself and for others. All the investigation that Bentham or any other philosopher may bring to the practical effects of action, to its immediate and ultimate results, finds a place in our moral judgments. It is in full intellections made up by exhaustive inquiry, that the reason sees the right. We might as well say, because the judge authoritatively decides a case, it is of no avail for the lawyers thoroughly to present it, as to say, that because conscience adjudicates between right and wrong, it is of no moment that the action to which the discussion pertains should be fully understood. It is the intellectual conception of this action which is declared right, and if this conception is incomplete, then a verdict intrinsically correct is practically false, as pronounced on a hypothetical case and not a real one. The last decision, that of conscience, we believe to be correct; the presentation of the case, that on which this decision is made, to be often incorrect. Here enter the full fruits of investigation and protracted experience, an opportunity for a broad, honest, faithful survey of the facts of the exact case to be made up and presented at the judgment-seat of the ethical sense. This merely gives the weight of law to what the other faculties have pronounced prudent and wise. There is no more opportunity for caprice and individual assumption here than in any debate concerning the qualities and bearings of actions.

We designate in common language as conscience that action of the reason which discovers the right, and this is the ground or centre of our entire moral nature. Any theory which regards obligation as simple and ultimate, therein accepts the intuitive and independent nature of the