3. _Special Sense._--Shall we attribute these ideas to a _special sense_? This is the view taken by Hutcheson and his followers. Ascribing, with Locke, all our simple ideas to sensation, but not content with Locke's theory of moral distinctions as the result of education, he sought to account for them by enlarging the sphere of sensation, and introducing a new sense, whose specific office is to take cognizance of such distinctions. The tendency of this theory is evident. While it derives the idea of right and its opposite from our natural constitution, and is, so far, preferable to either of the preceding theories, still, in assigning them a place among the sensibilities, it seems to make morality a mere _sentiment_, a matter of feeling merely, an impression made on our sentient nature--a mere subjective affair--as color and taste are impressions made on our organs of sense, and not properly qualities of bodies. As these affections of the sense do not exist independently, but only relatively to us, so moral distinctions, according to this view, are merely subjective affections of our minds, and not independent realities. _Hume and the Sophists._--Hume accedes to this general view, and carries it out to its legitimate results, making morality a mere relation between our nature and certain objects, and not an independent quality of actions. Virtue and vice, like color and taste, the bright and the dull, the sweet and the bitter, lie merely in our sensations. These skeptical views had been advanced long previously by the Sophists, who taught that man is the measure of all things, that things are only what they seem to us. _Ambiguity of the term Sense._--It is true, as Stewart has observed, that these views do not necessarily result from Hutcheson's theory, nor were they, probably, held by him; but such is the natural tendency of his doctrine. The term _sense_, as employed by him, is, in itself, ambiguous, and may be used to denote a _mental perception_; but when we speak of _a_ sense, we are understood to refer to that part of our constitution which, when affected from without, gives us certain sensations. Thus the sense of hearing, the sense of vision, the sense of taste, of smell, etc. It is in this way that Hutcheson seems to have employed the term, and his illustrations all point in this direction. He was unfortunate, to say the least, in his use of terms, and in his illustrations; unfortunate, also, in having such a disciple as Hume, to push his theory to its legitimate results. If, by a special sense, he meant only a direct perceptive power of the mind, then, doubtless, Hutcheson is right in recognizing such a faculty, and attributing to it the ideas under consideration. But that is not the proper meaning of the word _sense_, nor is that the signification attached to it by his followers.