It remains now to enquire what is the justification of the test propounded in this chapter. I do not found it on any external considerations, whether of Law or Revelation, both of which, I conceive, presuppose morality, but on the very make and constitution of our nature. The justification of the moral test and the source of the moral feeling are alike, I conceive, to be discovered by an examination of human nature, and, so far as that nature has a divine origin, so far is the origin of morality divine. Whatever the ultimate source of morality may be, to us, at all events, it can only be known as revealed or reflected in ourselves. What, then, is it in the constitution of our nature, which leads us to aim at the well-being of ourselves and those around us, and to measure our own conduct and that of others by the extent to which it promotes these ends? In answering this question, I must give a brief account of the ultimate principles of human nature, though this account has been partly anticipated in the last chapter. Human nature, in its last analysis, seems, so far as it is concerned with action, to consist of certain impulses or feelings, and a power of comparing with one another the results which follow from the gratification of these feelings, which power reacts upon the several feelings themselves by way of intensifying, checking, or controlling them. This power we call Reason. The feelings themselves fall into two principal groups, the egoistic or self-regarding feelings, which centre in a man's self, and are developed by his personal needs, and the altruistic or sympathetic feelings, which centre in others and are developed by the social surroundings in which he finds himself placed. These two groups of feelings, I conceive, were independent of one another from the first, or at least as soon as man could be called man, and neither of them admits of being resolved into the other. As the one was developed by and adapted to personal needs, so the other was developed by and adapted to the manifold requirements of family or tribal life, which, from the first, was inseparable from the life of the individual. Intermediate between these two groups of feelings, the purely self-regarding and the purely sympathetic, and derived probably from the interaction of both, is another group, which may be called the semi-social group. This group includes shame, love of reputation, love of notoriety, desire of fame, and the like, but, on analysis, it will be found that all these feelings admit of being referred to two heads, the love of approbation and the fear of disapprobation. Lastly, if any of our desires or feelings are thwarted by the intentional action of other men, the result in our minds is a feeling which we call Resentment, and which, though it regards others, is, unlike the sympathetic feelings, a malevolent and not a benevolent feeling. It is important, in considering the economy of human nature, to notice that Resentment, as is also the