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of one mental state. An obligation can not be felt without some direction or line of action to which it attaches. An obligation must be of a specific, definite character. An obligation without attachment to any act, is unintelligible, is no obligation. The quality right, seen in an act, is that which at once calls forth the feeling of duty, and directs it into a particular channel. No more can the intuition be separated from the feeling than the feeling from the intuition. Indeed, it is chiefly through the strong sentiment that accompanies it, that we discover the distinct character of the intuitive act. Language abundantly recognizes this double bearing of ethical insight. We have the word right as expressive of the intellectual recognition of moral law; and the words ought, obligation, duty, presenting the emotional element.

The theories which do not accept the original, simple, inseparable character of the idea right, explain the intellectual element by the generalized notion of utility. This is done with very different degrees of success by earlier and later writers; but the empirical school agree in making utility the intellectual ground of ethics. We have appetites, sensibilities, tastes, affections to be gratified. Any thing or action which affords pleasure to any one of these is useful. This common power, which .belongs to so many objects and relations, of furnishing some form of enjoyment, or some condition of it, is abstracted under the word utility. The inquiry which guides the conscience, it is said, is this inquiry into pleasure, into immediate and future enjoyment; and that, if fairly and thoroughly pushed and made to cover all gratifications high and low, it is an exhaustive statement of all that takes place in ethical research. While this is an inadequate theory of the intellectual grounds of duty, it is difficult to disprove it. What is affirmed by it does take place, and is a most apparent and a