Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics Part 17

Have we any difficulty to comprehend the force of humanity or benevolence? Or to conceive that the very aspect of happiness, joy, prosperity, gives pleasure; while pain, suffering, sorrow, communicate uneasiness? Here we have an unmistakeable, powerful, universal sentiment of human nature to build upon.

The author gives an expanded ill.u.s.tration of the workings of Benevolence or Sympathy, which well deserves to be read for its merits of execution. We must here content ourselves with stating that it is on this principle of disinterested action, belonging to our nature, that he founds the chief part of our sentiment of Moral Approbation.

Section VI. takes into the account QUALITIES USEFUL TO OURSELVES. We praise in individuals the qualities useful to themselves, and are pleased with the happiness flowing to individuals by their own conduct.

This can be no selfish motive on our part. For example, DISCRETION, so necessary to the accomplis.h.i.+ng of any useful enterprise, is commended; that measured union of enterprise and caution found in great commanders, is a subject of highest admiration; and why? For the usefulness, or the success that it brings. What need is there to display the praises of INDUSTRY, or of FRUGALITY, virtues useful to the possessor in the first instance? Then the qualities of HONESTY, FIDELITY, and TRUTH, are praised, in the first place, for their tendency to the good of society; and, being established on that foundation, they are also approved as advantageous to the individual's own self. A part of our blame of UNCHASt.i.tY in a woman is attached to its imprudence with reference to the opinion regarding it. STRENGTH OF MIND being to resist present care, and to maintain the search of distant profit and enjoyment, is another quality of great value to the possessor. The distinction between the _Fool_ and the _Wise_ man ill.u.s.trates the same position. In our approbation of all such qualities, it is evident that the happiness and misery of others are not indifferent spectacles to us: the one, like suns.h.i.+ne, or the prospect of well-cultivated plains, imparts joy and satisfaction; the other, like a lowering cloud or a barren landscape, throws a damp over the spirits.

He next considers the influence of bodily endowments and the goods of fortune as bearing upon the general question.

Even in animals, one great source of _beauty_ is the suitability of their structure to their manner of life. In times when bodily strength in men was more essential to a warrior than now, it was held in so much more esteem. Impotence in both s.e.xes, and barrenness in women, are generally contemned, for the loss of human pleasure attending them.

As regards fortune, how can we account for the regard paid to the rich and powerful, but from the reflexion to the mind of prosperity, happiness, ease, plenty, authority, and the gratification of every appet.i.te. Rank and family, although they may be detached from wealth and power, had originally a reference to these.

In Section VII., Hume treats of QUALITIES IMMEDIATELY AGREEABLE TO OURSELVES. Under this head, he dilates on the influence of CHEERFULNESS, as a social quality: on GREATNESS OF MIND, or Dignity of Character; on COURAGE; on TRANQUILLITY, or equanimity of mind, in the midst of pain, sorrow, and adverse fortune; on BENEVOLENCE in the aspect of an agreeable spectacle; and lastly, on DELICACY of Taste, as a merit. As manifested to a beholder, all these qualities are engaging and admirable, on account of the immediate pleasure that they communicate to the person possessed of them. They are farther testimonies to the existence of social sympathy, and to the connexion of that with our sentiment of approbation towards actions or persons.

Section VIII. brings forward the QUALITIES IMMEDIATELY AGREEABLE TO OTHERS. These are GOOD MANNERS or POLITENESS; the WIT or INGENUITY that enlivens social intercourse; MODESTY, as opposed to impudence, arrogance, and vanity; CLEANLINESS, and GRACEFUL MANNER; all which are obviously valued for the pleasures they communicate to people generally. Section IX. is the CONCLUSION. Whatever may have been maintained in systems of philosophy, he contends that in common life the habitual motives of panegyric or censure are of the kind described by him. He will not enter into the question as to the relative shares of benevolence and self-love in the human const.i.tution. Let the generous sentiments be ever so weak, they still direct a preference of what is serviceable to what is pernicious; and on these preferences a moral distinction is founded. In the notion of morals, two things are implied; a sentiment common to all mankind, and a sentiment whose objects comprehend all mankind; and these two requisites belong to the sentiment of humanity or benevolence.

Another spring of our const.i.tution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is Love of Fame. The pursuit of a character, name, and reputation in the world, leads to a habit of surveying our own actions, begets a reverence for self as well as others, and is thus the guardian of every virtue. Humanity and Love of Reputation combine to form the highest type of morality yet conceived.

The nature of moral _approbation_ being thus solved, there remains the nature of _obligation_; by which the author means to enquire, if a man having a view to his own welfare, will not find his best account in the practice of every moral virtue. He dwells upon the many advantages of social virtue, of benevolence and friends.h.i.+p, humanity and kindness, of truth and honesty; but confesses that the rule that 'honesty is the best policy' is liable to many exceptions. He makes us acquainted with his own theory of Happiness. How little is requisite to supply the _necessities_ of nature? and what comparison is there between, on the one hand, the cheap pleasures of conversation, society, study, even health, and, on the other, the common beauties of nature, with self-approbation; and the feverish, empty amus.e.m.e.nts of luxury and expense?

Thus ends the main treatise; but the author adds, in an Appendix, four additional dissertations.

The first takes up the question started at the outset, but postponed, how far our moral approbation is a matter of _reason_, and how far of _sentiment_. His handling of this topic is luminous and decisive.

If the utility of actions be a foundation of our approval of them, _reason_ must have a share, for no other faculty can trace the results of actions in their bearings upon human happiness. In Justice especially, there are often numerous and complicated considerations; such as to occupy the deliberations of politicians and the debates of lawyers.

On the other hand, reason is insufficient of itself to const.i.tute the feeling of moral approbation or disapprobation. Reason shows the means to an end; but if we are otherwise indifferent to the end, the reasonings fall inoperative on the mind. Here then a _sentiment_ must display itself, a delight in the happiness of men, and a repugnance to what causes them misery. Reason teaches the consequences of actions; Humanity or Benevolence is roused to make a distinction in favour of such as are beneficial.

He adduces a number of ill.u.s.trations to show that reason alone is insufficient to make a moral sentiment. He bids us examine Ingrat.i.tude, for instance; good offices bestowed on one side, ill-will on the other.

Reason might say, whether a certain action, say the gift of money, or an act of patronage, was for the good of the party receiving it, and whether the circ.u.mstances of the gift indicated a good intention on the part of the giver; it might also say, whether the actions of the person obliged were intentionally or consciously hurtful or wanting in esteem to the person obliging. But when all this is made out by reason, there remains the sentiment of abhorrence, whose foundations must be in the emotional part of our nature, in our delight in manifested goodness, and our abhorrence of the opposite.

He refers to Beauty or Taste as a parallel case, where there may be an operation of the intellect to compute proportions, but where the elegance or beauty must arise in the region of feeling. Thus, while _reason_ conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood, _sentiment_ or emotion must give beauty and deformity, vice and virtue.

Appendix No. II. is a discussion of SELF-LOVE. The author adverts first to the position that benevolence is a mere pretence, a cheat, a gloss of self-love, and dismisses it with a burst of indignation. He next considers the less offensive view, that all benevolence and generosity are resolvable in the last resort into self-love. He does not attribute to the holders of this opinion any laxity in their own practice of virtue, as compared with other men. Epicurus and his followers were no strangers to probity; Atticus and Horace were men of generous dispositions; Hobbes and Locke were irreproachable in their lives.

These men all allowed that friends.h.i.+p exists without hypocrisy; but considered that, by a sort of mental chemistry, it might be made out self-love, twisted and moulded by a particular turn of the imagination.

But, says Hume, as some men have not the turn of imagination, and others have, this alone is quite enough to make the widest difference of human characters, and to stamp one man as virtuous and humane, and another vicious and meanly interested. The a.n.a.lysis in no way sets aside the reality of moral distinctions. The question is, therefore, purely speculative.

As a speculation, it is open to these objections. (1) Being contrary to the unprejudiced notions of mankind, it demands some very powerful aid from philosophy. On the face of things, the selfish pa.s.sions and the benevolent pa.s.sions are widely distinguished, and no hypothesis has ever yet so far overcome the disparity as to show that the one could grow out of the other; we may discern in the attempts that love of _simplicity_, which has done so much harm to philosophy.

The Animals are susceptible of kindness; shall we then attribute to them, too, a refinement of self-interest? Again, what interest can a fond mother have in view who loses her health in attendance on a sick child, and languishes and dies of grief when relieved from the slavery of that attendance?

(2) But farther, the real simplicity lies on the side of independent and disinterested benevolence. There are bodily appet.i.tes that carry us to their objects before sensual enjoyment; hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their end; the gratification follows, and becomes a secondary desire. [A very questionable a.n.a.lysis.] So there are mental pa.s.sions, as fame, power, vengeance, that urge us to act, in the first instance; and when the end is attained, the pleasure follows.

Now, as vengeance may be so pursued as to make us neglect ease, interest, and safety, why may we not allow to humanity and friends.h.i.+p the same privileges? [This is Butler, improved in the statement.]

Appendix III. gives some farther considerations with regard to JUSTICE.

The point of the discussion is to show that Justice differs from Generosity or Beneficence in a regard to distant consequences, and to General Rules. The theme is handled in the author's usual happy style, but contains nothing special to him. He omits to state what is also a prime attribute of Justice, its being indispensable to the very existence of society, which cannot be said of generosity apart from its contributing to justice.

Appendix IV. is on some VERBAL DISPUTES. He remarks that, neither in English nor in any other modern tongue, is the boundary fixed between virtues and talents, vices and defects; that praise is given to natural endowments, as well as to voluntary exertions. The epithets _intellectual_ and _moral_ do not precisely divide the virtues; neither does the contrast of _head_ and _heart_; many virtuous qualities partake of both ingredients. So the sentiment of _conscious worth_, or of its opposite, is affected by what is not in our power, as well as by what is; by the goodness or badness of our memory, as well as by continence or dissoluteness of conduct. Without endowments of the understanding, the best intentions will not procure esteem.

The ancient moralists included in the virtues what are obviously natural endowments. Prudence, according to Cicero, involved sagacity or powers of judgment. In Aristotle, we find, among the virtues, Courage, Temperance, Magnanimity, Modesty, Prudence, and manly Openness, as well as Justice and Friends.h.i.+p. Epictetus puts people on their guard against humanity and compa.s.sion. In general, the difference of voluntary and involuntary was little regarded in ancient ethics. This is changed in modern times, by the alliance of Ethics with Theology. The divine has put all morality on the footing of the civil law, and guarded it by the same sanctions of reward and punishment; and consequently must make the distinction of voluntary and involuntary fundamental.

Hume also composed a dialogue, to ill.u.s.trate, in his light and easy style, the great variety, amounting almost to opposition, of men's moral sentiments in different ages. This may seem adverse to his principle of Utility, as it is to the doctrine of an Intuitive Sense of Right and Wrong. He allows, however, for the different ways that people may view Utility, seeing that the consequences of acting are often difficult to estimate, and people may agree in an end without agreeing in the means. Still, he pays too little attention to the sentimental likings and dislikings that frequently overbear the sense of Utility; scarcely recognizing it, except in one pa.s.sage, where he dwells on the superst.i.tions that mingle with a regard to the consequences of actions in determining right.

We shall now repeat the leading points of Hume's system, in the usual order.

I.--The Standard of Right and Wrong is Utility, or a reference to the Happiness of mankind. This is the ground, as wall as the motive, of moral approbation.

II.--As to the nature of the Moral Faculty, he contends that it is a compound of Reason, and Humane or Generous Sentiment.

He does not introduce the subject of Free-will into Morals.

He contends strongly for the existence of Disinterested Sentiment, or Benevolence; but scarcely recognizes it as leading to absolute and uncompensated self-sacrifice. He does not seem to see that as far as the approbation of benevolent actions is concerned, we are anything but disinterested parties. The good done by one man is done to some others; and the recipients are moved by their self-love to encourage beneficence. The regard to our own benefactor makes all benefactors interesting.

III.--He says little directly bearing on the const.i.tuents of Human Happiness; but that little is all in favour of simplicity of life and cheap pleasures. He does not reflect that the pleasures singled out by him are far from cheap; 'agreeable conversation, society, study, health, and the beauties of nature,' although not demanding extraordinary wealth, cannot be secured without a larger share of worldly means than has ever fallen to the ma.s.s of men in any community.

IV.--As to the substance of the Moral Code, he makes no innovations. He talks somewhat more lightly of the evils of Unchast.i.ty than is customary; but regards the prevailing restraints as borne out by Utility.

The inducements to virtue are, in his view, our humane sentiments, on the one hand, and our self-love, or prudence, on the other; the two cla.s.ses of motives conspiring to promote both our own good and the good of mankind.

V.--The connexion of Ethics with Politics is not specially brought out.

The political virtues are moral virtues. He does not dwell upon the sanctions of morality, so as to distinguish the legal sanction from the popular sanction. He draws no line between Duty and Merit.

VI.--He recognizes no relations.h.i.+p between Ethics and Theology. The principle of Benevolence in the human mind is, he thinks, an adequate source of moral approbation and disapprobation; and he takes no note of what even sceptics (Gibbon, for example) often dwell upon, the aid of the Theological sanction in enforcing duties imperfectly felt by the natural and unprompted sentiments of the mind.

RICHARD PRICE. (1723-1791.)

Price's work is ent.i.tled, 'A Review of the princ.i.p.al questions in Morals; particularly those respecting the Origin of our Ideas of Virtue, its Nature, Relation to the Deity, Obligation, Subject-matter, and Sanctions.' In the third edition, he added an Appendix on 'the Being and Attributes of the Deity.'

The book is divided into ten chapters.

Chapter I. is on the origin of our Ideas of Right and Wrong. The actions of moral agents, he says, give rise in us to three different perceptions: 1st, Right and Wrong; 2nd, Beauty and Deformity; 3rd, Good or Ill Desert. It is the first of these perceptions that he proposes mainly to consider.

He commences by quoting Hutcheson's doctrine of a Moral Sense, which he describes as an _implanted_ and _arbitrary_ principle, imparting a relish or disrelish for actions, like the sensibilities of the various senses. On this doctrine, he remarks, the Creator might have annexed the same sentiments to the opposite actions. Other schemes of morality, such as Self-love, Positive Laws and Compacts, the Will of the Deity, he dismisses as not meeting the true question.

The question, as conceived by him, is, 'What is the power within us that perceives the distinctions of Right and Wrong?' The answer is, The UNDERSTANDING.

To establish this position, he enters into an enquiry into the distinct provinces of Sense and of Understanding in the origin of our ideas. It is plain, he says, that what judges concerning the perceptions of the senses, and contradicts their decisions, cannot itself be sense, but must be some n.o.bler faculty. Likewise, the power that views and compares the objects of all the senses cannot be sense. Sense is a mere capacity of being pa.s.sively impressed; it presents _particular_ forms to the mind, and is incapable of discovering general truths. It is the understanding that perceives order or proportion; variety and regularity; design, connexion, art, and power; apt.i.tudes, dependence, correspondence, and adjustment of parts to a whole or to an end. He goes over our leading ideas in detail, to show that mere sense cannot furnish them. Thus, Solidity, or Impenetrability, needs an exertion of reason; we must compare instances to know that two atoms of matter cannot occupy the same s.p.a.ce. _Vis Inerticae_ is a perception of the reason. So Substance, Duration, s.p.a.ce, Necessary Existence, Power, and Causation involve the understanding. Likewise, that all Abstract Ideas whatsoever require the understanding is superfluously proved. The author wonders, therefore, that his position in this matter should not have been sooner arrived at.

The tracing of Agreement and of Disagreement, which are functions of the Understanding, is really the source of simple ideas. Thus, Equality is a simple idea originating in this source; so are Proportion, Ident.i.ty and Diversity, Existence, Cause and Effect, Power, Possibility and Impossibility; and (as he means ultimately to show) Right and Wrong.

Although the author's exposition is not very lucid, his main conclusion is a sound one. Sense, in its narrowest acceptation, gives particular impressions and experiences of Colour, Sound, Touch, Taste, Odour, &c.

The Intellectual functions of Discrimination and Agreement are necessary as a supplement to Sense, to recognize these impressions as differing and agreeing, as Equal or Unequal; Proportionate or Disproportionate; Harmonious or Discordant. And farther, every abstract or general notion,--colours in the abstract, sweetness, pungency, &c.--supposes these, powers of the understanding in addition to the recipiency of the senses.

To apply this to Right and Wrong, the author begins by affirming [what goes a good way towards begging the question] that right and wrong are simple ideas, and therefore the result of an _immediate_ power of perception in the human mind. Beneficence and Cruelty are indefinable, and therefore ultimate. There must be some actions that are in the last resort an end in themselves. This being a.s.sumed, the author contends that the power of immediately perceiving these ultimate ideas is the Understanding. Shaftesbury had contended that, because the perception of right and wrong was immediate, therefore it must reside in a special Sense. The conclusion, thinks Price, was, to say the least of it, hasty; for it does not follow that every immediate perception should reside in a special sensibility or sense. He puts it to each one's experience whether, in conceiving Grat.i.tude or Beneficence to be right, one feels a sensation merely, or performs an act of understanding.

'Would not a Being purely intelligent, having happiness within his reach, approve of securing it for himself? Would he not think this right; and would it not be right? When we contemplate the happiness of a species, or of a world, and p.r.o.nounce on the actions of reasonable beings which promote it, that they are _right_, is this judging erroneously? Or is it no determination of the judgment at all, but a species of mental taste [as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson supposed]? [As against a moral sense, this reasoning may be effective; but it obviously a.s.sumes an end of desire,--happiness for self, or for others--and yet does not allow to that end any share in making up the sense of right and wrong.] Every one, the author goes on to say, must desire happiness for himself; and our rational nature thenceforth must approve of the actions for promoting happiness, and disapprove of the contrary actions. Surely the understanding has some share in the revulsion that we feel when any one brings upon himself, or upon others, calamity and ruin. A being flattered with hopes of bliss and then plunged into torments would complain _justly_; he would consider that violence had been done to a perception of the human _understanding_.

He next brings out a metaphysical difficulty in applying right and wrong to actions, on the supposition that they are mere effects of sensation. All sensations, as such, are modes of consciousness, or feelings, of a sentient being, and must be of a nature different from their causes. Colour is in the mind, not an attribute of the object; but right and wrong are qualities of actions, of objects, and therefore must be ideas, not sensations. Then, again, there can be nothing true or untrue in a sensation; all sensations are alike just; while the moral rect.i.tude of an action is something absolute and unvarying.

Lastly, all actions have a nature, or character; something truly belonging to them, and truly affirmable of them. If actions have no character, then they are all indifferent; but this no one can affirm; we all strongly believe the contrary. Actions are not indifferent. They are good or bad, better or worse. And if so, they are declared such by an act of _judgment_, a function of the understanding.