use of these elaborate divisions and cross-divisions in working out his theory; and we need only remember that human nature is, in his opinion, a machine of innumerable parts, cunningly put together for benign purposes by the Divine artisan; and that each sense has a final cause which reveals itself to the reverent observer. 59. It is enough to speak of the moral sense. The proof that it is an independent faculty is, that none of the methods hitherto applied have resolved it into simpler elements. It cannot be analysed into sympathy, for we approve the virtues of our enemies; nor into the pleasure derivable from virtuous action, for it is the root and not the fruit of that pleasure; nor into a perception of utility to the agent or the approver, for bad actions may be useful as well as good; nor can it be derived from approval of conformity to the divine will, for the moral attributes of God must be previously known; nor from conformity to the truth or fitness of things, for that is a nugatory definition.' It remains, then, so Hutcheson assumes, that the moral sense must be a primitive faculty. 60. What, in the next place, are its functions? Is it an internal teacher, making known to us by declarations from which there is no appeal, that such an action is right, and such another action wrong? In that case, our duty would be revealed to us by a series of direct intuitions. Hutcheson, however, follows Locke in denying that we have innate ideas. The moral sense perceives virtue and vice as the eye perceives light and darkness; but it no more frames general propositions than the external sense provides us with mathematical theorems.2 The object of the sense is merely the internal feeling; and our judgments of actions may vary indefinitely as we infer that they proceed from one or other motive. He anticipates and retorts the ordinary objection that, to make the moral sentiments dependent upon feeling, is to make them variable. The variety in our judgments is 'not owing to any irregularity in the moral sense, but to a wrong judgment or opinion.'3 If putting the aged to death 'really tends to the public good,' 3 it is a good action; and circumstances are conceivable in which this would actually be the case; as, for example, in an 'Inquiry,' sec. iv. 'Moral Philosophy,' book i. ch. iv. overloaded boat in a storm. Different courses of action may be approved as they may flow from the same affections. And thus the moral sense is simply a natural tendency to approve certain affections which tend to the public good. It approves the benevolent affections directly, and indirectly it leads us to approve such actions, and such actions alone, as flow from goodwill, or, at lowest, from dispositions which exclude the highest selfishness.' Benevolence, for example, meets with the highest, fortitude and veracity 2 meet with lower degrees of approval. To the self-regarding virtues he assigns, like Shaftesbury, an inferior place, and, indeed, falls into the assumption that a tendency to promote the public happiness is not only the measure of goodness in actions, but should be the sole motive to performing them. 61. The complication which follows from Hutcheson's theory that 'to each of our powers we seem to have a corresponding taste or sense commending the proper use of it to the agent, and making him relish or value the like exercise of it by another,' is characteristic ; and were it removed, the moral sense would become identical with the benevolent instincts. The result of this false analysis is to produce a curious and more important confusion. The moral sense, as we discover, and as is apparent from remarks just quoted, approves the benevolent affections because, and in so far as, they conduce to the public good. From considering the moral sense, he tells us, we might 'proceed to consider more particularly the several offices of life, and to discover what partial affections and actions consequent upon them are to be entirely approved, as beneficial to some parts of the system, and perfectly consistent with the general good; and what appetites and affections, even of a beneficent kind, though they may be useful to a part, are pernicious to the general system, and thus deduce the special laws of nature from this moral faculty and generous determination of soul.' We find, in short, that Hutcheson uses two standards-the public good, and the approval of the moral sense-and uses them indifferently, because he is convinced of their absolute identity. In his discussion of particular problems, the moral sense 'System,' i. 63. 3 Ib. i. 59. Ib. i. 98. 2 Ib. i. 66. passes out of sight altogether, and he becomes a pure utilitarian. 3 62. Hutcheson, indeed, appears to have been the first person to proclaim the celebrated formula, 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number.'' This principle is thoroughly interwoven into his system. The moral faculty,' he tells us, most approves and recommends such dispositions as tend most to the general good, and, at the same time, such as may give the noblest enjoyment to the agent upon consideration ;' 2 for, like Shaftesbury, he takes great pains to prove that virtue is happiness even to the individual. Still more expressly, he declares that 'the ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good.' He attacks Butler for asserting that there can be any other justification of punishment than 'the tendency of sufferings to the public good,' and points out very clearly the confusion produced in this instance by Butler's habitual confusion between punishment and suffering. Finally, he maintains that a precept of the Law of Nature is 'no more than a conclusion from observation of what sort of conduct is ordinarily useful to society.'5 Hutcheson, in short, though he occasionally refers to the metaphysical doctrine of compacts underlying certain social arrangements, refers habitually and distinctly to utility as the sole and sufficient measure of virtue. 63. Hutcheson, then, substantially propounds a problem. His 'moral sense' is nothing but the approval of such affections, and consequently of such courses of action, as are most conducive to the public welfare. How, then, does it happen that such affections and actions are approved? Hutcheson assumes that because none of the ordinary explanations are Hutcheson's use of this phrase occurs in the 'Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil,' sec. iii. § 8. In the same manner,' he says, 'the moral evil or vice' (of a given action) 'is as the degree of misery and number of sufferers; so that that action is best which procures the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers.' In Bentham's Works, x. 79, 80, it is said that Bentham first thought of the principle on reading Priestley's Treatise on Government.' At p. 142 the alternative is suggested that the phrase may have been borrowed from Beccaria; who, in the preface to his essay on crimes and punishments, condemns laws which have not been made from the point of view of la massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero. Hutcheson has clearly the right of priority, whatever the value of the thing claimed. ♦ Ib. p. 256. 5 lb. p. 273. 2 System,' i. 139. 3 Ib. 266. P. sufficient, no explanation can be given except the divine ordinance. God enters his system, not as the supreme judge and awarder of rewards and penalties, but as the skilful contriver of a harmonious system. Man is a machine of vast complexity, so put together that the resultant of its various forces always points in that direction which is most beneficial to society. The origin of our moral sentiments remains, as with Butler, a mystery; but the end to which they point is no longer mysterious. The moral sense is a kind of Ithuriel's spear, which, when brought into contact with our affections, reveals their true quality, showing the angelic nature of those which are conducive to the public good and the diabolical character of those which are opposed to it. Or it resembles the fabulous cups which detected the poison lurking in any drink poured into them; and enables us to reject the antisocial, and accept the social emotions.. When utility was thus recognised as the criterion of virtue, it required but one step to admit that it was also the cause of moral approbation. That step was taken by Hume, who had some personal relations with Hutcheson; but Hutcheson explicitly declined to accept an explanation which appeared to be equivalent to resolving virtue into selfishness. 64. The ethical speculations of Reid, the most eminent writer of the Common-Sense school, are contained in his Essays on the Active Powers,' but would scarcely justify a prolonged analysis. They may be described briefly as a combination of the views of Clarke and Shaftesbury, though most resembling those of Butler. Recognising the nugatory character of Clarke's theory,' he also thinks that to adopt Shaftesbury's theory would be to make morality arbitrary, as dependent upon a ' natural or acquired taste." The conscience, therefore, which guides our moral judgments, is at once, in his language, an intellectual and an active power, and its supremacy is, as with Butler, an ultimate and self-evident fact.3 This power, which is simply common sense applied to moral questions, is, of course, capable of laying down as many first principles as may be required. Here, as elsewhere, the difficulty of finding an ultimate justification for axioms is evaded 1 Reid's Works, p. 676. 2 Ib. p. 534. Ib. pp. 597, 598. by simply declaring that no justification is needed; but there is nothing in Reid's ethical doctrine which had not been more articulately worked out by his predecessors, except that his facility in multiplying first principles is, perhaps, more marked and his philosophy proportionally weaker. V. HARTLEY AND ADAM SMITH. 65. Two remarkable attempts were made at explaining the mechanism of the mysterious power postulated by the Common-Sense school. Hutcheson had spoken slightingly of sympathy, and of the association of ideas as means of explaining our moral judgments. Sympathy was, in his eyes, merely a variety of selfishness. We dislike seeing pain in others because it produces a sympathetic pain in ourselves. And such a feeling would not account for a moral sentiment in cases where this sympathetic action could not be set up. A brave man dying is interested in the fate of his family, though he would know that their suffering after his death could inflict no pain upon him.' Association again is briefly noticed as useful in many ways, but also as exciting a disturbing influence. It leads us, for example, to dislike or admire certain actions, without asking whether our feelings are justified by reason, or produced only by an accidental collocation of circumstances. Hartley endeavoured to make association the fundamental law of our intellectual and emotional nature; and Adam Smith tried to resolve all our moral sentiments into sympathy. 66. David Hartley published his Observations on Man' in 1749. He had been a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, but being deterred by some scruples from taking orders, became a physician. To the writings of Sir Isaac Newton and Locke he owed, as his son tells us, the first stimulant to his intellect, but the hint which immediately suggested his peculiar theory came from a Mr. Gay, who afterwards published his sentiments in a dissertation prefixed to Law's translation of King's 'Origin of Evil.' The candour which prompted this avowal is in harmony with the admirable simplicity, truthful ''System,' i. 48. See Life prefixed to vol. iii. of Works. |