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HI MARKS ON THE PREDICATES OF MORAL JUDGMENTS. LS5 belong to the very same groups of phenomena as those which are apt to call forth resentment and gratitude ; and that the essential differences between moral indignation and resentment, and between moral approval and gratitude con- sist in the disinterestedness and relative impartiality which characterise every moral emotion. A comprehensive study of the moral ideas of various nations and in various ages confirms the ingenious hypothesis set forth by Adam Smith, that resentment and gratitude belong to the root-principles of the moral consciousness a circumstance all the more satisfactory to the student of psychical origins as anger towards an ill-doer and friendliness towards a well-doer are mental facts easily explicable as results of natural selection. How these primary attitudes of mind have been modified, chiefly through sympathy and social influences, into moral emotions, does not concern us at present. I merely wish to point out the fact, generally overlooked, that the impartiality which a moral emotion presupposes is not absolute, only relative, that is, impartiality within certain limits. Absolute impartiality, I understand, would concede to all sentient beings equal rights. But where is it to be found, and who would look upon it as equitable? The moral estimation recognises classes with different rights. It requires im- partiality within the limits of each class, but those limits themselves may have been drawn with the greatest parti- ality. If, for instance, a savage censures as wrong a homicide committed upon a member of his own tribe, but praises as meritorious one committed upon the member of another, he attributes different rights to the members of the respective tribes, and his indignation and his approval possess not only that personal disinterestedness, but at the same time that relative impartiality, which is required by tribal morality. After these preliminary remarks, I shall proceed to what is the chief object of the present article, viz., to show in what relation the various moral predicates stand to the emotions of indignation and approval. Such a detailed examination will, I think, afford the best proof possible of the emotional basis of the moral consciousness. In modern Ethics the conception of ought generally occupies a central position among moral predicates. It is frequently looked upon as an ultimate and unanalysable notion, as "too elementary" to quote Prof. Sidgwick 1 -"to admit of any formal definition ". This view, I think, 1 Sidgwick, The. Method* of Ethics (1893), p. 34.