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that should refer compassion, love, hope, as induced feelings, to the influence of others over the mind. Evidently all extraneous action is of no avail to awaken a feeling not given in the emotional constitution itself. A sense of duty, of obligation, is as simple as any emotion can be and if we acknowledge its presence, we must look on it as primitive in our constitution. But a sense of obligation is not intelligible as a general unattached feeling, indicating no definite line of conduct, haunting the mind as a vague premonitory fear, ready to be seized on by the first foreign force, to be applied as an alien impulse, having no necessary existence in the individual nor office for him. The imposed opinion of others can not create a feeling; the feeling of duty, like every feeling, must have a deeper basis than this. A general notion of obligation, with no intellectual element, no specific direction given to it by the mind whose it is, is as incomprehensible as would be a general impression of truth, or delight in truth, with nothing presenting itself as truth; or a vague satisfaction in beauty, with no object regarded by us as beautiful. What can be found in our constitution, allied to such an unattached, unelicited emotion? The vague feelings of fear sometimes present to the mind nevertheless disclose to more careful inquiry some occasion and ground of attachment in past experience and existing circumstances.

There are but two open, plausible theories of our moral constitution; the one which recognizes it as an original, independent part of our constitution; and the one which, through generalization, explains its manifestations by the facts of our physical and social position, making utility and public sentiment the germs of its intellectual and emotional elements. The last, in its pure, naked form, produces a far off semblance of the facts, replacing love and duty with fear and interest, and mistaking the forces at work in