Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/220

210 their organic unity into the two distinct departments of "intellectual" and "moral" science.

Another consideration connected with this principle is, that instead of being led by it to do what many philosophers, in order to preserve their consistency, have done—instead of being led by it to observe in morality nothing but the features of a higher self-love, and a more refined sensuality, together with the absence of free-will; we are, on the contrary, led by it to note, even in the simplest act of perception, an incipient self-sacrifice, the presence of a dawning will struggling to break forth, and the aspect of an infant morality beginning to develop itself. This consideration we can only indicate thus briefly; for we must now hurry on to our point.

We are aware of the attempts which have been made to invest our emotions with the stamp and attribute of morality; but, in addition to the testimony of our own experience, we have the highest authority for holding that none of the natural feelings or modifications of the human heart partake in any degree of a moral character. We are told by revelation, and the eye of reason recognises the truth of the averment, that love itself, that is, natural love, a feeling which certainly must bear the impress of morality if any of our emotions do so—we are told by revelation in emphatic terms that such love has no moral value or significance whatsoever. "If ye love them," says our Saviour, "which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the