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114 they are not called upon to exercise charity toward those, who think differently upon matters of right and duty, any more than they are towards those that assert that gold is white and coal yellow.

But it always implies a high culture—a much higher moral than intellectual culture—to adopt the Rational System. We would therefore deal gently with it, and treat those who receive it with great respect. We are nevertheless compelled, if we are to do justice to every part of human nature, to point out its defects. These defects will be felt by those only, who have a metaphysical turn of mind. By attending to the operations of their own minds, they will find that they do not and cannot judge of a thing, whether it be right and obligatory or not, merely by knowing what the thing is. In other words, they will find that good and right is not a quality of actions, but rather the relation of actions to some ultimate good, which relation can be determined only by an exercise of the understanding.

M. Jouffroy has not attempted to develop his own system in the work before us; yet we think that it would not be difficult to foresee, from what has been said, what its essential features would be. He must recognise every motive that we are conscious of,—the unreflecting impulses, self love, the love of others, and the love of the right and true and beautiful in and for itself. He would deny that good and right are qualities of actions to be directly perceived by a special and appropriate sense. He would maintain that there is an absolute good, order, right, or beauty, the ideas of which are furnished by the Reason prior to any judgment of the understanding, and before we can say of any act or thing, this is good or right or beautiful. All things, he would teach, whether actions or institutions, are judged of by comparing them with the ideas of absolute good and beauty furnished to the mind by the Reason, and approved or condemned accordingly. Whatever tends to bring about this absolute good is right and obligatory, whatever does not is wrong, and should be avoided. Duty is only a means to the absolute good.

The difference between this and the Rational System consists principally in the result of the analysis of that action of the mind, by which we come to know what is right. Jouffroy would say that duty is but a means to the