Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/615

599 intuition. We are aided in arriving at this idea of it by observing the form which it takes in good men. Virtue and vice are not understood by means of an elaborate system of syllogisms. They are comprehended by instinct, as it were. This blind intellectual impulse is called the 'boniform faculty.' It has an affective side, for it perceives good and evil by means of the pleasure and pain which they awaken. It is an aspect of right reason; yet, since it is only one aspect, one may speak of the two as if they were different. In this way one may say that the good is understood by right reason, and enjoyed by the boniform faculty. It is well known that good and evil are rightly judged of by men in proportion, not to their intelligence, but to their goodness. The inevitable result is the variation of the boniform faculty in the minds of different people. In some it is keen and accurate, in some it has become partially obscured, while in others it is entirely gone. On this account it is incumbent upon men to do all in their power to preserve the boniform faculty, through which they perceive virtue's most divine side. Since the faculty has this high office, it is the interpreter and judge of right reason itself. If the latter decides anything contrary to the boniform faculty, it is evil. An external idea of the good is all very well in itself; but what is of value is the intuition which takes the place of the idea, and is to be looked for, not outside the mind, but within it. The consequence of the relation between the practice of virtue and its intuitive perception is that, as men lay aside the one, they lose the other. There are some human beings who recognize no fixed principle in their faculties, but think that they should obey the passion that for the moment is the strongest. Obviously, with such men there is no use in appealing to the boniform faculty. Probably they do not believe in its existence. In fact, for them it does not exist. If right and wrong are to be made