NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

lose much of their character were it not for their interpenetration by those of the moral nature. It is this filtration of the higher sensibilities downward which gives coherence and authority to the recognition of truth, to esthetical feelings, which of themselves simply have little binding force. The only imperative voice in man's nature, is that of conscience; all other authority is but the echo and reflection of this. In one view of the subject our moral nature may be said to be our entire nature; since a moral quality and moral relation are imparted to all thoughts and actions by the presence of this supreme, supervisory power. In a more strict use, our moral nature includes those emotions which more directly spring from it. Conscience, the perceptive faculty, which, in an indivisible act, sees the right and feels the sense of obligation, is the centre of our moral constitution. "Without it, we should have no affections, no moral sentiments; with it, we find the whole atmosphere of our being irradiated, and a thousand colors revealed in objects, tangible, indeed, in the darkness; endowed with odor and with flavor, but with no direct avenue of approach through the physical night to the intellectual day. Light does not more modify, I may say etherealize matter, multiplying a thousand fold its intelligible signs, crowding them in from all quarters and all distances on the astonished mind, than does a moral perception affect our estimates of character, deepen in meaning, and broaden in time the relations of actions.

The fundamental moral feeling from which all others spring is that of obligation. This, as regards pleasure and pain, is indifferent. It may give place to one or the other according to the attitude assumed toward the duties designated. The blended, the indivisible nature of the intuition and the accompanying sentiment should be carefully marked. A sense of obligation, a mere feeling, with no conviction