a perception of the merit or demerit of the
agent. The first is of course the main question; and the author gives a
long review of the history of Ethical doctrines from Hobbes downwards,
interspersing reflections and criticisms, all in favour of the
intuitive origin of the sense. As illustrative parallels, he adduces
Personal Identity, Causation, and Equality; all which he considers to
be judgments involving simple ideas, and traceable only to some
primitive power of the mind. He could as easily conceive a rational
being formed to believe the three angles of a triangle to be equal to
one right angle, as to believe that there would be no injustice in
depriving a man of the fruits of his labours.

On the second point--the pleasure and pain accompanying right and
wrong, he remarks on the one-sidedness of systems that treat the sense
of right and wrong as an intellectual judgment purely (Clarke, &c.), or
those that treat it as a feeling purely (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and
Hume). His remarks on the sense of Merit and Demerit in the agent are
trivial or commonplace.

Chapter VI. is 'Of Moral Obligation.' It is needless to follow him on
this subject, as his views are substantially a repetition of Butler's
Supremacy of Conscience. At the same time, it may be doubted whether
Butler entirely and unequivocally detached this supremacy from the
command of the Deity, a point peculiarly insisted on by Stewart. His
words are these:--

'According to some systems, moral obligation is founded entirely on our
belief that virtue is enjoined by the command of God. But how; it may
be asked, does this belief impose an obligation? Only one of two
answers can be given. Either that there is a moral fitness that we
should conform our will to that of the Author and the Governor of the
universe; or that a rational self-love should induce us, from motives
of prudence, to study every means of rendering ourselves acceptable to
the Almighty Arbiter of happiness and misery. On the first supposition
We reason in a circle. We resolve our sense of moral obligation into
our sense of religion, and the sense of religion into that of moral
obligation.

'The other system, which makes virtue a mere matter of prudence,
although not so obviously unsatisfactory, leads to consequences which
sufficiently invalidate every argument in its favour. Among others it
leads us to conclude, 1. That the disbelief of a future state absolves
from all moral obligation, except