ABSTRACT
Certain actions possess a quality which excites a feeling of approval on the part of what is called the moral sense. The judgments of the moral sense are further ultimate and unanalyzable. The criterion of approval by the moral sense cannot be resolved into anything else. The moral sense theory has been held in a number of different forms, the difference between the forms of the theory consisting mainly in the different types of actions of which the moral sense has been regarded as approving. The traditional moral customs of the barbarians and early Greeks become the highly elaborate and rational morality of the Greek philosophers. The somewhat primitive and vindictive morality which animates the heroes of the Old Testament is refined into the highly spiritualized moral code of the Sermon on the Mount. The process by which society becomes more complex and moral codes more elaborate is sufficiently obvious.
