SEWARD.
Assuredly such a spectator of human nature as we have imagined could not be indifferent to such a tendency of these natural emotions. He could not observe with unconcern even the nascent streaks of light, the dawning of a religious mind. He would call that Good which, though it had no distinct and conscious reference to anything above the Earth, did yet, by the very preparation it made in the Soul for the reception of something more holy, vindicate to itself a heavenly origin.
NORTH.
Even the Ancients, contemplating that Power in the Mind which judges so supremely of Right and Wrong, could call it nothing else than a God within us. He then who, in the highest light of knowledge, contemplates the human mind, will be yet more strongly impressed with this Sanctity of the Conscience, which affected even minds lying under much darkness and abasement, and therefore alienated from such perceptions. He undoubtedly will regard this principle as a part of original Religion not yet extinct in the Soul: will, as such, esteem and revere it; and conceiving the highest perfection of human nature to consist in its known and willed Conformity to the Divine Will, will regard with kindred feelings even this imperfect and unconscious conformity to that Law, which is thus maintained by the human spirit, resolutely and proudly struggling, in the midst of its errors, against a yet deeper fall.
TALBOYS.
And, sir, it must be remembered that, as the degrees of moral goodness are different in the various dispositions and actions of men, though they all fall under the description of one morality; so, too, the feeling of moral approbation exists in very different degrees in different minds, though in all it bears a common name. If the moral sensibility is not enlightened and quickened by those feelings which belong to its most perfect state, its judgments will be proportionally faint and low. As in its virtue there is a lower virtue, which tends merely to a Harmony with the Divine Will, so, in the judgment of virtue, there is a lower judgment, which implies no more than that he who judges has his own mind brought into a state in which there is a tendency to the same sacred and solemn apprehensions.
NORTH.
The Moral judgments of men are vague and undefined; but they are accompanied universally with a solemn feeling: not merely of dislike—not, in the highest degree, of mere detestation and hate—not merely with reproach and resentment for violating the benevolence, and invading the happiness of human nature; but there is a sensation of awe accompanying the sentiment of condemnation, which visibly refers to something more than what is present to our eyes on the face of the smiling or the blasted Earth. Among all nations, the abhorrence and punishment of crime has always reference to some indignation that is conceived of among higher powers. Their Laws are imagined to be under a holier sanction, and in their violated majesty there is apprehended to be something of the anger of offended Deity. Hence the wrath of Punishments, which have been conceived of as fulfilling heavenly displeasure; and those who have inflicted signal retributions have imagined that they avenged their Gods as well as the broken laws of men.
TALBOYS.
This feeling of a superhuman authority present in the affairs of men shows decisively what is the tendency, in natural minds, of moral feeling, when it is aroused to its greatest height; the season in which it may be expected best to declare its own nature.