LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 x^? 
 
 Deceived ^t^^-7 , 189 2 
 
 Accessions No. r^Class No. 
 
NOTES, EXPOSITORY AND CRITICAL, 
 
 ON 
 
 CERTAIN BRITISH THEORIES OF MORALS. 
 
KDINJJURGH : PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLE, 
 FOR 
 
 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 
 
 LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 DUBLIN M'GLASHAN AND GILL. 
 
 GLASGOW . . JAMES MACLEHOSE. 
 
NOTES 
 
 EXPOSITORY AND CRITICAL 
 
 ON 
 
 CERTAIN BRITISH THEORIES OF MORALS. 
 
 BY SIMON S. LAURIE, A.M., 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' PHILOSOPHY OF ETHICS,' ETC. 
 
 EDINBUEGH: 
 
 EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS. 
 
 1868. 
 
3 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THOMAS HOBBES, . . 1 
 
 LORD SHAFTESBURY, ... 7 
 
 FRANCIS HUTCHESON, . 25 
 
 BISHOP BUTLER, 54 
 
 TRANSITION. DAVID HUME, . 72 
 JEREMY BENTHAM, .... .77 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL, . .... 98 
 
 PROFESSOR BAIN, 128 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THESE contributions to the history of 
 ethical speculation in Britain would have 
 had a place in a treatise on the Philosophy 
 of Ethics, published by me nearly two years 
 ago, had I not found that an adeq^late treat- 
 ment of the various representative writers 
 on Morals involved too great a departure 
 from the line of arg^lment within which I 
 then wished to confine myself} 
 
 Ethical language has undergone so much 
 change from time to time, and has at all 
 times been so loosely employed, that a con- 
 sistent exposition of the older writers is dif- 
 ficult, and to some extent involves interpre- 
 tation. If the expositions given in this book 
 
 1 See footnote to page 139 ^/"Philosophy of Ethics. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 are faithful, and if the language of the past 
 is brought into harmony with oiir present 
 terminology, some service will have been 
 rendered to the student, even should the 
 criticisms be found to fall short of the 
 importance of their several sitbjects. 
 
 S. S. L. 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1868. 
 
THOMAS HOBBES. 
 
 IT is not my purpose either to expound or criticise 
 the ethical system of the philosopher of Malmesbury. 
 The following extracts from his Leviathan and Human 
 Nature passages which I had marked in the course 
 of my reading are strung together that the student 
 may have before him some of those moral opinions 
 and definitions which, by their boldness, their vigour, 
 and their consistency, startled the ethical conscious- 
 ness of England, and formed the point of departure 
 of British Moral speculation, A.D. 1645-1650. 
 
 ' Whatever is the object of any man's appetite or 
 desire, that is it which he, for his part, calleth good ; 
 and the object of his hate and aversion, evil ; and of 
 his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these 
 words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used 
 with relation to the person that useth them ; there 
 being nothing simply and absolutely so, nor any 
 common rule of good and evil to be taken from the 
 nature of the objects themselves; but from the per- 
 son of the man where there is no commonwealth, or 
 in a commonwealth from the person that represent- 
 eth it ; or from an arbitrator or judge whom men 
 
 A 
 
2 Thomas Hobbes. 
 
 disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sen- 
 tence the rule thereof/ 
 
 ( Sudden Glory is the passion which maketh those 
 grimaces called Laughter; and is caused either by some 
 sudden act of their own that pleaseth them, or by the 
 apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by 
 comparison whereof they suddenly applaud them- 
 selves/ 
 
 ' Grief for the calamity of another is Pity ; and 
 riseth from the imagination that a like calamity may 
 befal himself ; and therefore is called also Compassion, 
 and, in the phrase of this present time, a fellow-feel- 
 ing ; and, therefore, for calamity arising from great 
 wickedness the best men have the least pity ; and for 
 the same calamity those hate pity that think them- 
 selves least obnoxious to the same/ 
 
 6 The acknowledgment of power is called Honour/ 
 
 ' Reverence is the conception we have concerning 
 another, that he hath the power to do unto us both 
 good and hurt, but not the will to do us hurt! 
 
 ' Repentance is the passion which proceedeth from 
 opinion or knowledge that the action they have done 
 is out of the way to the end they would attain : the 
 effect whereof is, to pursue that way no longer, but, 
 by the consideration of the end, to direct themselves 
 into a better/ 
 
 1 There is yet another passion, sometimes called Love, 
 but more properly Good-will or charity. There be no 
 greater argument to a man, of his own power, than to 
 find himself able not only to accomplish his own 
 
Thomas Hobbes. 3 
 
 desires, but also to assist other men in theirs : and 
 this is that conception wherein consisteth charity. In 
 which, first, is contained that natural affection of 
 parents to their children, which the Greeks call 
 Sropyr}, as also, that affection wherewith men seek to 
 assist those that adhere unto them. But the affection 
 wherewith men many times bestow their benefits on 
 strangers, is not to be called Charity, but either con- 
 tract, whereby they seek to purchase friendship ; or 
 fear, which maketh them to purchase peace/ 
 
 The ' alternate succession of appetites, aversions, 
 hopes, and fears is no less in other living creatures 
 than in man ; and therefore beasts also deliberate/ 
 . . . ' In deliberation the last appetite or aversion 
 immediately adhering to the action, or to the omis- 
 sion thereof, is that we call the Will the act, not the 
 faculty of willing. And beasts that have deliberation 
 must necessarily also have will.' . . . ' Will, there- 
 fore, is the last appetite in deliberating.' 
 
 ' Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of 
 the body and mind, as that though there be found 
 one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of 
 quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned 
 together the difference between man and man is not 
 so considerable as that one man can therefore claim 
 to himself any benefit to which another may not pre- 
 tend as well as he/ 
 
 ' From this equality of ability ariseth equality of 
 hope in the attaining of our ends. And, therefore, if 
 any two men desire the same thing, which neverthe- 
 
4 Thomas Hobbes. 
 
 less they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies ; 
 and in the way to their end, which is principally their 
 own conservation, and sometimes their delectation 
 only, endeavour to destroy or subdue one another.' 
 
 ' So that in the nature of man we find three prin- 
 cipal causes of quarrel. First, Competition ; second, 
 Diffidence ; thirdly, Glory/ . . . 'Hereby it is mani- 
 fest that, during the time men live without a common 
 power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condi- 
 tion which is called War ; and such a War as is of 
 every man against every man/ 
 
 1 The desires and other passions of man are in them- 
 selves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed 
 from those passions, till they know a Law that forbids 
 them ; which, till laws be made, they cannot know ; 
 nor can any law be made till they have agreed upon 
 the person that shall make it/ 
 
 ' To this war of every man against every man this 
 also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The 
 notions of Eight and Wrong, Justice and Injustice, 
 have there no place. Where there is no common 
 power there is no Law ; where no Law, no injustice/ 
 
 Hobbes then deduces nineteen ' Laws of Nature' a 
 Law of Nature being a ' precept or general rule found 
 out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do 
 that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away 
 the means of preserving the same, and to omit that 
 whereby he thinketh it may be best preserved. 
 Among these laws are included all the virtues. 
 
 'And the science of these laws is the true and 
 
Thomas Plobbes. 5 
 
 only Moral Philosophy. For Moral Philosophy is 
 nothing else but the science of what is good and evil 
 in the conversation and society of mankind. Good 
 and Evil are names that signify our appetites and 
 aversions ; which in different tempers, customs, and 
 doctrines of men are different ; and divers men differ 
 not only in their judgment on the senses of what 
 is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hear- 
 ing, touch, and sight, but also of what is unfavour- 
 able or disagreeable to reason in the actions of 
 common life. Nay, the same man in divers times 
 differs from himself; and one time praiseth, that 
 is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth 
 and calleth Evil ; from whence arise disputes, contro- 
 versies, and at last war. And, therefore, so long as a 
 man is in the condition of mere nature, which is a 
 condition of war, private appetite is the measure of 
 good and evil ; and consequently all men agree on 
 this, that peace is good, and therefore also the way or 
 means of peace, which, as I have showed before, are 
 justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the 
 rest of the laws of nature are Good, that is to say, 
 moral virtues ; and their contrary vices Evil. Now the 
 science of Virtue and Vice is Moral Philosophy, and 
 therefore the true doctrine of the laws of nature is 
 the true Moral Philosophy. But the writers of Moral 
 Philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues 
 and vices, yet, not seeing wherein consisted their 
 goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the 
 means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living, 
 
6 Thomas Hobbes. 
 
 place them in a mediocrity of passions ; as if not the 
 cause but the degree of daring made fortitude ; or 
 not the cause but the quantity of a gift made liber- 
 ality. These dictates of reason men used to call by 
 the name of laws, but improperly ; for they are but 
 conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth 
 to the conservation and defence of themselves ; whereas 
 Law properly is the word of him that by right hath 
 command over others. But yet, if we consider the 
 same theorems as delivered in the Word of God that 
 by right commandeth all things, then are they pro- 
 perly called Laws/ 
 
 Cumberland and Cudworth were the chief oppon- 
 ents of Hobbism. Their speculations, and those of 
 a few writers of less note, fill up the remainder of 
 the 17th century. In 1699 appeared Lord Shaftes- 
 bury's Inquiry concerning Virtue, which forms the 
 groundwork of all ethical speculations, since that 
 period, on the intuitional side. 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 THE MOKAL THEOKY OF LORD 
 SHAFTESBURY. 
 
 The connexion between Virtue and Religion is the 
 ostensible subject of Lord Shaftesbury 's inquiries. 
 But to show the independence of Virtue on the belief 
 in a God, and on the other hand the dependence of 
 the perfection of it on a right conception of the Deity, 
 was impossible without inquiring what Virtue was in 
 itself. Thus his treatise became almost purely ethical. 
 The introductory dissertation on Theism, Atheism, 
 Polytheism, and Dsemonism concludes thus : ' Now, 
 since there are these several opinions concerning a 
 superior Power ; and since there may be found perhaps 
 some persons who have no formed opinion at all on 
 this subject, either through scepticism, negligence of 
 thought or confusion of judgment ; the consideration 
 is how any of these opinions, or the want of any cer- 
 tain opinion, may possibly consist with virtue and 
 merit, or be compatible with an honest or moral 
 character/ 
 
 In prosecuting this inquiry, Shaftesbury begins by 
 considering the end of sensible creatures, as that is 
 revealed by their Constitution or ' Frame/ From this 
 Constitution it appears that each creature has for itself 
 a private good and interest, which is a right state of 
 that creature, and which is forwarded by nature, and 
 ' affectionately sought' by the creature itself. If any- 
 thing in the appetites or passions of the creature do 
 
8 Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 not conduce to this end, this private good, it is 
 ' ill ' to him. Further, if the natural constitution is 
 such that by being ill to others he is ill to himself, 
 and by being good to others he is good to himself ; 
 and if the being good to others is Virtue, then Virtue 
 and Private Interest agree. That this is the fact will 
 be proved further on. Meanwhile, the prior question, 
 ' What Goodness or Virtue is ? ' has to be answered. 
 
 If a creature existed such that it was absolutely 
 complete in itself, and sufficient to itself, and had no 
 relation to any other creature or system in the uni- 
 verse of things, it might in a certain sense be called 
 ' Good/ But if it had a relation to a system if there 
 were something in it which pointed beyond itself, if 
 it were in truth only a part of a whole, and not itself 
 a whole, and yet had no affection or activity in the 
 direction of that system or whole, it manifestly could 
 not be called Good. Nay, if it be merely ' insignificant 
 and of no use/ it is faulty or imperfect, and conse- 
 quently not good. It is also manifest that if a sensible 
 creature acts for the benefit of the ' system/ to which 
 he belongs, by force or without c affection/ he is neither 
 good nor ill ; these qualities being predicable of him 
 only when the ' good or ill of the system to which he 
 has relation is the immediate object of some passion 
 or affection moving him/ A creature, therefore, is 
 good or ill only through the affections. 
 
 What, then, are the good or natural affections, and 
 what are the ill or unnatural affections 1 
 
 That amount of regard to private interest which is 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 9 
 
 not incompatible with a due regard for the system of 
 which it forms a part is ' not ill : ' while that regard to 
 private interest which is essential to the good of the 
 whole or the system, is necessary to constitute a 
 creature good. But it is not good, in so far as self- 
 affection or any secondary consideration, such, for 
 example, as Fear, is the motive and the end to the 
 pursuit either of private interest or the good of other 
 creatures ; but only in so far as the act is prompted by 
 affection for its kind. Accordingly, 'a good creature 
 is such a one as by the natural temper or bent of 
 its affections is carried primarily and immediately, 
 and not secondarily or accidentally, to Good, and 
 against 111/ And an ill creature is just the con- 
 trary. 
 
 But proceeding from ' what is esteemed mere 
 Goodness, and lies within the reach and capacity of 
 all sensible creatures, to that which is called Virtue 
 or Merit, and is allowed to Man only/ we find that, 
 in a creature ( capable of forming general notions of 
 things, not only are the outward beings which offer 
 themselves to the sense the objects of the affection ; 
 but that the very actions themselves, and the affec- 
 tions of Pity, Kindness, Gratitude, and their con- 
 traries, being brought into the mind by reflection, 
 become objects and ends. So that, by the means of this 
 reflected sense, there arises another kind of affection 
 directed towards those very affections themselves 
 which have been already felt, and are now become 
 the subject of a new liking or dislike/ Thus certain 
 affections are at once discerned to be good and vir- 
 
io Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 tuous, and certain others bad and vicious, just as the 
 outward eye discerns beauty and deformity in the 
 world of sense. These moral distinctions have their 
 foundation in nature, and the discernment of them is 
 natural, and 'from nature alone/ 1 Thus the mind 
 carries about with it ' characters or pictures of 
 manners/ and in presence of these the heart or Moral 
 Sense cannot remain neutral, but constantly takes 
 part with one ' turn of affection/ and one sentiment 
 or another, approving the honest and natural, and 
 disapproving the dishonest and unnatural. The 
 Heart (Moral Sense), discerning what is good and ill 
 towards the system to which the individual belongs, 
 by affecting the just and right, is virtuous, and by 
 affecting the contrary is the contrary. But it is 
 the reflex act of affecting the notion or conception 
 of the good which makes a man virtuous. For if a 
 creature cannot reflect on what he himself does, or 
 sees others do, so as to take notice of the honest and 
 good, and ' make that notice or conception of honesty 
 and goodness the object of his affection, he has not the 
 character of being virtuous : for thus, and no other- 
 wise, is he capable of having a sense of Right or 
 Wrong! Eight and Wrong are not in the act as such, 
 but in the affection which prompts the act. A mis- 
 take in a matter of fact, for example, being ' no cause 
 or sign of ill affection, can be no cause of vice. But a 
 mistake of right* (mistakes which are frequently the 
 consequence of certain religious superstitions), ' being 
 
 1 The Moralists, p. 415. 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 11 
 
 the cause of unequal [i.e., unjust, bad] affection, must 
 of necessity be the cause of vicious action in every 
 intelligent or rational being/ Thus far a knowledge 
 of Eight and Wrong is essential to Virtue in every 
 man that is, such a use of Reason as * is sufficient to 
 secure a right application of the affections/ 
 
 Accordingly, with intelligent creatures goodness 
 [goodnesses], virtues, etc., constitute l rational objects/ 
 and become ' rational affections ; ' and where these 
 rational affections triumph over the ' sensible' or non- 
 rational, a man is rightly called virtuous. Provided 
 always it be the affection towards Goodness or Virtue 
 which has led to the triumph, and not some secondary 
 motive or ulterior self-interested end. 
 
 ' The nature of Virtue consisting in a certain just 
 disposition or proportionable affection of a rational 
 creature towards the moral objects of Right and 
 Wrong, nothing can, in such a creature, exclude a 
 principle of virtue, or render it ineffectual, except 
 what either takes away the natural and just sense of 
 Right and Wrong ; or creates a wrong sense of it ; or 
 causes the right sense to be opposed by contrary 
 affections. And again, nothing can advance virtue in 
 a man, except what either nourishes and promotes a 
 sense of Right and Wrong ; or preserves it genuine 
 and uncorrupt ; or causes it, when such, to be obeyed, 
 by subduing and subjecting the other affections to it/ 
 Shaftesbury then proceeds to consider the possible 
 influence for good or evil in these three directions of 
 the various opinions regarding the Supreme Being, set 
 
1 2 Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 forth in the beginning of his essay on Virtue. It is 
 unnecessary to follow him through this part of his 
 argument; because although full of suggestive thoughts 
 on a subject of great interest, it has not, in the present 
 state of ethical inquiry, a direct bearing on the lead- 
 ing problems. His concluding words on this topic 
 will therefore suffice : 
 
 ' Hence we may determine justly the relation which 
 Virtue has to Piety ; the first being not complete but 
 in the latter ; since where the latter is wanting there 
 can neither be the same benignity, firmness, nor con- 
 stancy ; the same good composure of the affections or 
 uniformity of mind. And thus the perfection and 
 height of Virtue must be owing to the belief of a 
 God/ 
 
 In his second book Shaftesbury, having in the pre- 
 vious part of his treatise considered ' What Virtue is/ 
 and to whom the character of 'Virtuous' properly 
 belongs, enters on the question of the ' Obligation 
 to Virtue.' In establishing this obligation, he pro- 
 ceeds by first repeating as his starting-point that 
 ' Eectitude, Integrity, or Virtue/ is to have one's affec- 
 tions right and entire, not only in respect of one's self, 
 but in respect of the Kind or System of which we 
 form a part. He then combats the opinion that Self- 
 interest is in opposition to the Public interest or good, 
 although the respective affections (Selfish and Good) 
 have objects which seem to imply an inherent anta- 
 gonism. That the fact is quite the reverse, he shows 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 1 3 
 
 by citing, by way of illustration, the misery of the ill- 
 humoured, rancorous, and perverse man. With refer- 
 ence to such cases, he shows that we are too apt to omit 
 from our reckoning the balanced constitution of our 
 nature, and the discord and consequent misery which 
 ensues on a disturbance of its harmony. We forget 
 to regard ourselves in the light of the notion of a 
 Whole made up of parts, and thus fail to understand 
 how some particular act should result in moral pain. 
 When a man is thoroughly bad, we all admit that he 
 is miserable, while sometimes disposed to doubt the 
 wretchedness which must naturally follow from any 
 one particular vicious act. If we kept in view this 
 ' fabrick' of the mind, we should see that ' whoever 
 did ill, or acted in prejudice of his Integrity, Good- 
 nature, or Worth, would of necessity act with greater 
 cruelty towards himself than he who scrupled not to 
 swallow what was poisonous, or who, with his own 
 hands, should voluntarily mangle or wound his out- 
 ward form or constitution, natural limbs or body/ 
 
 Entering more into detail, Shaftesbury goes on to 
 show that the Affections or Passions which may in- 
 fluence or govern are ' (l.) The Natural Affections, 
 which lead to the good of the Public; (2.) The Self- 
 Affections, which lead only to the good of the Private; 
 and (3.) Such as are neither of these, nor tending to 
 any Good of either the Public or Private, but con- 
 trariwise ; and which therefore may justly be styled 
 unnatural affections/ The last sort is wholly vicious; 
 the two former may be vicious or virtuous, according 
 
14 Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 to their degree. For, it is not right that the Self- 
 affections should be too weak, nor, on the other hand, 
 that the Public affections should be too strong. He 
 recurs here to the idea of an inward constitution or 
 economy, and maintains that virtue is not truly 
 attained where harmony and balance of the passions 
 and affections are lost. If, for example, Self-affections 
 are overpowered by the Public, the whole system 
 suffers, as well as the individual. Strictly speaking, 
 therefore, to have any ' natural affection too high, or 
 any self-affection too low, though it be often ap- 
 proved as a Virtue, is a Vice and Imperfection/ 
 Strictly speaking it is so ; but at the same time he 
 confesses that a man is properly to be considered as 
 vicious, only when (1.) Either the public affections 
 are weak and deficient ; (2.) or the private and 
 self-affections are too strong ; or (3.) (as stated 
 above) where such affections arise as tend neither 
 to the support of the public or private system, but 
 contrariwise. His next task is to consider these three 
 mental conditions, with a view to show that it is 
 contrary to man's interest to manifest any of these 
 affections, and that it is ' his Interest to be wholly 
 Good and Virtuous.' 
 
 First, it has to be shown that ' to have the natural 
 affections (such as are founded in Love, Complacency, 
 Goodwill, and a sympathy with the Kind or Species) is 
 to have the chief means and power of self-enjoyment ; 
 and, that to want them is certain misery and ill/ To 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 1 5 
 
 prove this, we must first know what it is which con- 
 stitutes Happiness, which may be summed up as the 
 Pleasures of the Body and the Mind. The Pleasures 
 of the Mind are much greater than those of the Body ; 
 and it consequently follows, that whatever creates in 
 any intelligent being a constant flowing series of 
 mental enjoyments, is of more importance to his 
 happiness than bodily pleasures. As such mental 
 enjoyments are either the ' natural' [the good, kindly, 
 virtuous] affections! in their immediate operation, or 
 proceed from them as their effects, the due establish- 
 ment of these in a creature is the only means of 
 procuring a certain and solid happiness. Shaftesbury 
 then illustrates this position in detail, by showing the 
 genuine pleasures which are yielded to a rational 
 being by the cultivation of the social and friendly, 
 the Intellectual and the Virtuous (by which he here 
 means consciously exercised benignant), affections ; 
 even the very grief of the affections being associated 
 with a deeper pleasure than the satisfaction of our 
 common appetites. With reference to the effects of 
 the activity of these affections, he cites the pleasures 
 of participating in the joys of others, and the reflected 
 approbation which comes back to us as the doers of 
 benignant deeds. He then shows that the partial 
 exercise of these affections their grudging exercise 
 does not result in pleasure, but in the reverse ; while 
 the hearty and entire affection (which he identifies 
 with Integrity of mind) carries along with it a con- 
 sciousness of merited love and approbation from all 
 
1 6 Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 society, and is truly to ' live according to nature and 
 the dictates and rules of supreme wisdom, is Morality, 
 Justice, Piety, and natural Keligion/ 
 
 But further, man, by virtue of his reason, is a 
 Eeflective Animal, and is capable of self-inspection 
 and self-approbation. This reflective approval or dis- 
 approval of the just and natural, or unjust and un- 
 natural, act is properly called Conscience a name not 
 strictly applicable to the approval or disapproval of 
 acts merely prejudicial to our own private interests. 
 This moral conscience precedes and presupposes 
 religious Conscience. For the fear of the terrors of 
 the Deity does not imply a Conscience at all, except 
 where there is also a self-reprobation of the wrong 
 and ill-deserving act in itself. Conscience is ' a sense 
 of deformity in what is ill-deserving and unnatural \ 
 also ' a consequent shame or regret at incurring what 
 is odious and moves aversion/ He also defines it ' a 
 natural sense of the odiousness of crime and injustice/ 
 Now, if the reflex power gives rise in the case of the 
 Vicious to such feelings, they must be most miserable. 
 And if it were alleged that there were men without 
 any such moral sense, it would then also follow that 
 they could not be capable of natural affection ; and 
 ' if not of that, then neither of any social pleasure or 
 mental enjoyment/ or of their effects, as these have been 
 expounded above. As to that other kind of conscience 
 not strictly so called the reflection on * what was at 
 any time unreasonably and foolishly done in prejudice 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 17 
 
 of one's real interest or happiness' [i.e., private or self- 
 interest as opposed to the natural and virtuous affec- 
 tions] Shaftesbury points to the indirect effect on such 
 private good of a want of those affections, which bring 
 in their train the approbation and reciprocated kind- 
 ness of our fellow-men, summing up thus : 
 
 ' From all this we may easily conclude how much 
 our happiness depends on natural and good affection. 
 For if the chief happiness be from the Mental Plea- 
 sures, and the chief Mental Pleasures are such as we 
 have described, and are founded in natural affection, 
 it follows that to have the natural affections is to have 
 the chief means and power of Self-enjoyment, the 
 highest possession and Happiness of life.' 
 
 Shaftesbury then endeavours to show that even the 
 pleasures of Sense are satisfactions only to the extent 
 to which they imply social and natural affection ; and 
 passes finally to the consideration of that inner balance 
 which nature intended as its end, wherever it gave a 
 Constitution or Economy, and to which reference had 
 several times been made in the course of his general 
 exposition. In this inward Constitution we find given 
 natural and public as well as private affections ; and 
 that constitution consequently suffers and is impaired 
 wherever due activity is denied to these affections ; 
 nay, they will force their prison-house, and create for 
 themselves 'unusual and unnatural,' and therefore 
 destructive exercise. ' Whoever is the least versed in 
 this moral kind of architecture, will find the inward 
 
1 8 Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 fabrick so adjusted, and the whole so nicely built, that 
 the barely extending of a single passion a little too 
 far, or the continuance of it too long, is able to bring 
 irrecoverable ruin and misery/ 
 
 ' Thus we have demonstrated that to have the 
 natural and good affections is to have the chief means 
 and power of self-enjoyment : So, on the other side, to 
 want them is certain misery and ill/ 
 
 Shaftesbury now goes on to prove that, by ' having 
 the /S^-passions too intense or strong, a creature be- 
 comes miserable/ These Self or ' Home ' affections (as 
 he calls them) are Love of Life ; Eesentment of In- 
 jury ; Pleasure or Appetite towards nourishment and 
 the means of generation; Interest, or the desire of 
 those conveniences by which we are well provided 
 for and maintained; Emulation or Love of Praise and 
 Honour ; Indolence, or Love of Ease and Eest. These, 
 taken together, constitute, according to Shaftesbury, 
 Interestedness or Self-Love. 
 
 That the excess of these self-affections is injurious 
 to the Public Interest, all admit ; that they are also 
 injurious to the private interest of the individual who 
 indulges them, may easily be proved. It is unneces- 
 sary for us here to follow Shaftesbury. If the names 
 which he gives to the excess of these passions are 
 accepted, viz., Cowardice, Eevengefulness, Luxury, 
 Avarice, Vanity and Ambition, and Sloth, we may 
 spare ourselves the trouble of showing that they are 
 evils to the individual no less than to society evils in 
 
Lord Shaftesbnry. 19 
 
 themselves, as well as by losing us our natural affec- 
 tions, on which we have shown the happiness of man 
 mainly to depend. 
 
 The next step in the argument is to show that 
 those passions which contribute to the advancement 
 neither of the public nor private system, or which 
 are unnatural, tend to the misery of the individual 
 agent. To name them is enough : for who can doubt 
 that Inhumanity, Petulancy (wanton mischievous- 
 ness), Malignity, Envy, Misanthropy, Superstition, 
 Lusts, Tyranny, Ingratitude, where they possess the 
 human soul, cause Misery 'in the highest degree V 
 
 From all which argument we are driven to the 
 conclusion that to be wicked or vicious is to be 
 miserable and unhappy is, in other words, to injure 
 Self. On the other hand, it is equally manifest that 
 the Happiness and Good of Virtue, and therefore also 
 its obligation, are beyond question. If further evidence 
 were needed, it would be found in what we have 
 stated respecting the Balance and Economy of our 
 inner nature. 
 
 Thus, then, ' the Wisdom of what rules and is First 
 and Chief in Nature has made it to be according to 
 the private interest and good of every one to work 
 towards the general good ; which, if a creature ceases 
 to promote, he is actually so far wanting to himself, 
 and ceases to promote his own happiness and welfare. 
 He is on this account directly his own enemy, nor 
 
2O Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 can he any otherwise be good and useful to himself 
 than as he continues good to society, and to that 
 whole of which he is himself a part. So that Virtue, 
 which of all excellences and beauties is the chief and 
 most amiable ; that which is the prop and ornament 
 of human affairs ; which upholds communities, main- 
 tains union, friendship, and correspondence amongst 
 men ; that by which countries as well as private fami- 
 lies flourish and are happy, and for want of which 
 everything comely, conspicuous, great, and worthy 
 must perish and go to ruin ; that single quality, thus 
 beneficial to all society and to mankind in general, is 
 found equally a happiness and good to each creature 
 in particular, and is that by which alone man can be 
 happy, and without which he must be miserable. And 
 this Virtue is the Good, and Vice is the 111 of every 
 one/ 1 
 
 With Shaftesbury, words which are now distin- 
 guished, and many of which had been distinguished 
 by Hobbes, are used as synonymous ; sometimes they 
 are interchanged in senses not strictly equivalent. 
 Hence it is requisite to seize the main line and final 
 purpose of his thought, as we have endeavoured to do, 
 if we would interpret him in the sense which he him- 
 self would have accepted. Looking at his system in 
 
 1 It may not be superfluous here to point out that our exposition and 
 criticism have reference only to the moral theories, not the moral writings, 
 of Shaftesbury and others. Were it otherwise, it would be impossible to 
 omit an account of 'The Moralists' of which Leibnitz wrote with such 
 generous enthusiasm, recognising in it the substance of his Theodicee. 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 2 1 
 
 this liberal and sympathetic spirit, we are able to dis- 
 cern in it the basis of all the Intuitionalism of the 
 eighteenth century. Virtue, Merit, Worth, Eight con- 
 sist, according to him, in the exhibition of the natural 
 affections, by which he means those affections which 
 have for their object the good of our kind, that is, of 
 the rational system of which we form a part. This 
 Virtue is further seen to be the End of man's consti- 
 tution, as soon as we have learned that man is an 
 ' Economy/ a Whole made up of parts. Self-interest, 
 meanwhile, under which we may include all those 
 desires and acts which have for their ultimate end the 
 satisfaction of the individual, is legitimately the object 
 of our concern, provided it be subject to the control- 
 ling influence of the natural or public affections- 
 Where these latter, however, do not directly or in- 
 directly enter, there' is no Virtue, no Merit, no Worth. 
 The defect of Shaftesbury's theory is not to be found 
 in his conception of the end of man, but in the limited 
 notion which he forms of Virtue, which is the condi- 
 tion of man's attaining his end. Virtue has a much 
 wider range than he concedes to it : it embraces the 
 notion of Moral Law, and obedience to it as such ; and 
 it also embraces those Self-regarding Moral ends which 
 do not in their intent touch the Public good ; which, 
 in truth, derive their distinctive moral character from 
 the fact that they exalt the personality of the agent. 
 The very word integrity has to him no meaning 
 except that of entirety of public affection. He also 
 errs in assuming throughout as a postulate that the 
 
22 Lord SJiaftesbury . 
 
 aggregate of Happiness is the end of man, failing to 
 distinguish subjective Happiness as a test of action 
 from the sum of Happiness these two things being 
 in truth most commonly incompatible. 
 
 Having determined the end of man, and wherein 
 consists the Eight or Virtuous in Action, he only 
 slightly touches on the question of the faculty by 
 which we discriminate this 'Eight/ and still more 
 slightly on the authority which belongs to it, and 
 which constitutes it ' the Eight/ The moment we see 
 exhibited those affections commonly known as virtu- 
 ous and laudable, we are so constituted, he affirms, that 
 we instantaneously approve them. We have, then, 
 thus far a e Moral Sense/ With regard to subjective 
 acts, again, such as the preference of mental to bodily 
 pleasures, he appeals to the universal sense of all who 
 have experienced both. He does not claim for man 
 any distinct faculty by means of which right purposes 
 and acts are each individually pronounced good, but 
 only a power of reflectively comparing the pleasures, 
 bodily, mental, and moral, which have been enjoyed, 
 and, by means of this reflex act, setting one above the 
 other. This reflex act of approbation is Shaftesbury's 
 Conscience or Moral Sense it is the Sense of the 
 Virtuous, the consciousness of a man with himself 
 that he is Eight or Wrong. The doctrine is erroneous, 
 rather by defect than otherwise. Inner authority and 
 L aw _ the supreme fact of ethical Consciousness is not 
 explained. The path of Virtue is so plain and flowery, 
 that the phenomena of Law, Duty, Struggle, Eemorse 
 
Lord Shaftesbury. 23 
 
 scarcely enter into the writer's thoughts. They can 
 have no place where all is so beautiful to the moral 
 eye, so seductive, so easy and so advantageous. 
 
 The Obligation to Virtue, again, is simply the obliga- 
 tion to pursue that which is so conspicuously our only 
 happiness, both when we look to our lower and to our 
 higher interests, that not to pursue it is the extremity 
 of folly. The weakness of this part of his system is 
 sufficiently revealed in the phrase which he employs 
 as an equivalent for obligation to Virtue, viz., reason 
 to embrace it. He never for a moment dreams of any 
 obligation other than Self-interest. His system might 
 in many respects be regarded as an extension of the 
 Hobbistic use of that term. 
 
 Such a theory of refined Eudsemonism, while con- 
 taining much well-reasoned truth, has after all proved 
 only this, that Virtuous affections no less than private 
 or self-affections are natural to man ; that if we cul- 
 tivate the former, giving free scope to self-interest only 
 to the extent to which it does not conflict with these, 
 we shall be happy ; and that thus only can we be 
 happy. The test, the ultimate criterion, therefore, of 
 all actions is Happiness the aggregate Happiness of 
 the individual agent. 
 
 That the theory of Morality should be left at this 
 point was impossible. There were deeper things in 
 man's nature than this refined, and cultivated, and 
 well-balanced mind had been able to see. Eose-colour 
 is not the prevailing hue of mortal life. There is an 
 inner discord deep and mysterious ; there is a self-end 
 
24 Lord Shaftesbury. 
 
 which yet is not a personal end ; there is a supreme 
 law which does not lie without ; there is a terrible voice 
 of authority in the heart, and a terrible possibility of 
 Eemorse. A stronger hand was needed to take up the 
 lamp of thought and carry it into these remote re- 
 cesses. That hand was the hand of Bishop Butler. 
 But before we discuss the merits and defects of his 
 higher doctrine, we must give a place to another 
 prophet of intuitional eudaemonism, Francis Hutche- 
 sou, whose name has been specially identified with 
 the doctrine of a Moral Sense. 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 25 
 
 FRANCIS HUTCHESON (1725). 
 
 With full and explicit recognition of his indebted- 
 ness to Shaftesbury, Hutcheson entered upon the same 
 field in which his predecessor had achieved so much 
 and so well merited distinction. His original treatise 
 was specially directed against the reasonings of Man- 
 deville, a circumstance which necessarily modified 
 his course of argument. He differed from his master 
 also in his point of view, and, consequently, in his 
 manner of approaching the question. It was not the 
 existence of the Virtuous affections in man, and the 
 Happiness of Virtue which mainly interested him and 
 which gave stimulus to his thought and balance and 
 closeness to his argument, but the 'Sense' whereby 
 certain mental states were discerned to be virtuous. 
 This question, although not ignored by Shaftesbury, 
 had not been deliberately taken up by him as a cen- 
 tral and vital one. 
 
 In the preface to the fourth edition of his Inquiry, 1 
 Hutcheson himself tells us that his principal design 
 was ' to show that Human Nature was not left quite 
 indifferent in the affairs of Virtue to form to itself 
 
 1 Hutcheson's Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and 
 Virtue appeared in 1725. In 1728 he published an Essay on the Nature 
 and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, which contained illustrations 
 and extensions of his theory, and very subtle controversion of the theories 
 of Clarke, Woolaston, and others. A fourth edition of his original work 
 was piiblished, with corrections, in 1738. His Introduction to Moral Phi- 
 losophy, and the Posthumous Lectures, published (in 1735) after his death, 
 contain also a statement of his theory. 
 
26 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 observations concerning the advantage or disadvantage 
 of actions, and accordingly to regulate its conduct/ 
 but that the Almighty had given us strong affections 
 to be the springs of Virtue, and made Virtue herself 
 'a lovely form, that we might easily distinguish it 
 from its contrary/ 
 
 In conducting the inquiry which is to establish this 
 opinion, he begins by stating that Moral Goodness is 
 the Quality in actions which causes us to approve or 
 love the agent, and by asking whence this approba- 
 tion arises. 
 
 Our sensible perceptions yield us pleasure, and those 
 things which directly yield us the pleasures of sense 
 are called good, and give origin to the word ; while 
 those things which mediately lead to these pleasures 
 are called useful or advantageous. The former are 
 immediately, the latter mediately, Good. Thus far 
 we discern the influence of Hobbes. 
 
 Hence it is apparent that our sense of Pleasure 
 precedes our perception of the Advantageous, and is 
 the foundation of the perception. 
 
 When we seek such pleasures or goods, e.g., the 
 sensuous and the artistic, or what mediately leads to 
 them, Kiches, we seek them from Interest or Self- 
 Love. 
 
 Many hold that those actions and dispositions which 
 we call Moral are obeyed by us because they are the 
 Laws of a Superior Being, and, as Law, carry with 
 them rewards and punishments of a general kind, 
 which make it our Self-interest to obey them ; and 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 27 
 
 that in so far as we approve them in others, we do so 
 because we see their bearing on the natural good of 
 the whole, and therefore to some extent on our own. 
 The ground of approbation, as well as the motive 
 of morality, is thus reduced to Self-interest, or regard 
 to selfish pleasures distinct from the mere moral act as 
 such. Virtue is thus a mediate, not an immediate, 
 Good. 
 
 Others hold that we are by our nature determined 
 to a sense or perception of pleasure, or of immediate 
 good or beauty, in certain acts and dispositions as 
 such, whether in others or ourselves, apart from any 
 consequent advantage ; but that our motive in per- 
 forming such actions is merely the realizing in our- 
 selves of that pleasurable sensation just as we seek 
 after fine landscapes or statues in order to gratify our 
 sense of beauty : and thus they reduce motives of 
 action to Self -Interest in another form only sub- 
 stituting, in point of fact, the immediate for the 
 mediate. 
 
 Hutcheson's object is to show 
 
 ' I. That some actions have to men an immediate 
 goodness, or that by a Superior Sense, which he calls 
 a Moral one, we approve the actions of others, and per- 
 ceive them to be their perfection and dignity, and 
 are determined to love the agent. A like perception 
 we have in reflecting on such actions of our own, 
 without any view of natural advantage from them. 
 
 ' II. That the Affection, Desire, or Intention which 
 gains approbation to the actions flowing from it, is 
 
28 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 not an intention to obtain even this sensible pleasure, 
 much less the future rewards from sanctions of laws 
 or any other natural good which may be the conse- 
 quence of the virtuous action, but an entirely different 
 principle of action from Self-Love or Desire of Private 
 Good/ 
 
 The course of argument runs thus : 
 
 Had we no Sense or instinctive feeling of Good 
 distinct from advantage, interest, or 'natural good' 
 (all which terms are, with Hutcheson, synonymous), 
 we should have the same kind of pleasurable feeling 
 towards a commodious house that we have towards a 
 generous or noble character. So with Evil and the 
 incommodious. Hence it is evident that there is an 
 instinctive feeling of Good on the presentation of 
 certain acts, which we separate from others as Moral. 
 In other words, there is a Moral Sense which, as an 
 inner determination, corresponds to those outer deter- 
 minations, the external senses ; by which external 
 senses we mean, he says, ' a Determination of the 
 Mind to receive any idea from the presence of 
 an object which occurs to us, independently of our 
 
 win: 
 
 To say that our pleasure in the moral qualities of 
 those great actions which adorn the past, arises from 
 our perceiving that they might have been advantage- 
 ous to us had we lived in the time and place of their 
 performance, is untrue in fact ; for did our advantage, 
 interest, or natural good determine our feeling, the 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 29 
 
 successful tyrant would engage our affection, not un- 
 successful virtue. 
 
 But it may be maintained that our perception of 
 the beautiful and good, in actions not directly affect- 
 ing our own ' natural good/ arises from the fact that 
 we know that whatever profits one part profits the 
 whole, and thus some small share may ultimately 
 reach each individual ; and that actions which con- 
 template the good of the whole, if universally per- 
 formed, would most effectually secure the good of 
 each individual, and of ourselves among others. To 
 this the answer is, that there is no such reflec- 
 tion on the effect of acts, and that our approbation is 
 immediate. We admire more the act of Codrus than 
 that of the miser who buried a pot of gold which 
 we may have found, and who has thus contributed 
 much more to our personal advantage than the 
 former did. Further, it will be found that although 
 our Desire of Virtue in ourselves or others may be 
 counterbalanced by Interest, our sentiment or per- 
 ception of its beauty and of the deformity of the 
 opposite cannot be influenced in this way. 
 
 Accordingly we conclude that we have in us a 
 Moral Sense directing our actions by which is meant 
 not any innate idea or practical proposition, but a 
 ' Determination of our minds to receive the simple 
 ideas of Approbation or Condemnation, from actions 
 observed, antecedently to any opinions of advantage 
 or loss to redound to ourselves from them, even as 
 we are pleased with a regular Form or harmonious 
 
3O Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 Composition' in itself, and apart from advantage or 
 disadvantage. 
 
 Having shown that there is a Moral Sense, that is, 
 an inner determination of Feeling, whereby one action 
 performed by others or by ourselves is immediately, 
 and without reference to any other considerations 
 whatsoever, felt to be beautiful or virtuous and an- 
 other deformed or vicious, Hutcheson next proceeds 
 to consider the Motive which impels to virtuous 
 acts. 
 
 The proposition which he now endeavours to prove 
 is, that every action which is morally good or evil is 
 supposed to flow from some affection towards rational 
 agents, that is, towards God or Man ; and that the 
 moment we separate an act from such presumed 
 affection it loses its moral character. Temperance, 
 for example, except in so far as it arises from obedi- 
 ence to God, is not morally good, but simply an atten- 
 tion to natural good, viz., health. Courage, except 
 when stimulated by love of country or hatred of 
 wrong, is not a virtue. So with Prudence (if it re- 
 gards only individual interest) and Justice. 
 
 Hutcheson then argues thus : Virtue consists in cer- 
 tain Affections, or actions consequent on these affec- 
 tions ; and if it can be shown that these affections do 
 not spring from self-love or self-interest, it will appear 
 that ' Virtue is not pursued from any regard to the 
 interest or self-love of the pursuer/ All affections are 
 but modifications of Love and Hate. The former is 
 subdivided into Love of (i.e., which consists in) Com - 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 3 1 
 
 placence or Esteem, and Love of (i.e., which consists 
 in) Benevolence. Now, both these affections are 
 stirred in us immediately by the presentation of cer- 
 tain qualities in objects, which qualities we must love. 
 No appeal to our advantage in respect of 'natural' 
 goods would induce us to the active exercise of esteem 
 or benevolence, although it might induce us to simu- 
 late these affections. We conclude that self-interest, 
 in none of its forms, can lead us to that love of 
 others which is expressed by Esteem and Benevolence 
 in their various modifications, and that the originat- 
 ing cause of these affections in us is a generous 
 Instinct, which comes into operation on the presen- 
 tation of its objects, and which has nothing to do 
 with our self-love, or interest, or advantage, or natural 
 good, but only with itself and its object. 
 
 If this be the case with Esteem or Benevolence, it 
 is equally so with other virtuous affections, such as 
 Fear or Eeverence in presence of Goodness, Power, 
 and Justice. Were it possible to have these affections 
 towards a being simply from regard to the effect on 
 our interests, we could be bribed to entertain them 
 towards a being not good, which is by our nature 
 impossible. Here again, therefore, it appears that all 
 virtue flows from love to Persons, or some other 
 affection equally disinterested; and that, when we are 
 excited to virtuous actions, we are so from some 
 other motive than self-interest, just as when we feel 
 the virtue of actions this feeling has been shown to 
 be independent of self-love or interest in any form. 
 
32 Francis Hutcheson* 
 
 Now, we come to the question, ' Is Virtue pursued 
 because of the concomitant pleasure V No, says 
 Hutcheson. For, first, if ' we pursue Virtue because 
 it is pleasant, then before we resolved to pursue it 
 there must have been a prior sense of Virtue, ante- 
 cedent to ideas of advantage' upon which the know- 
 ledge of this advantage is founded. Secondly, 
 some Virtue or the practising of some virtuous affec- 
 tions, such as Sorrow, Anger, Compassion, is not 
 pleasant. These affections arise, and ought to arise, 
 on the occurrence of the suitable objects ; and pain- 
 ful though they be, we could not justify to ourselves 
 the extinction of the affections while the objects 
 which roused them were present. It is not motives 
 of self-love, then, but the frame of our nature which 
 ' determines us to be thus affected, and approves our 
 being so/ In like manner, the pleasant virtuous affec- 
 tions are not chosen by us because they are pleasant, 
 but they arise simply on seeing their objects. 
 
 True, if we have practised virtuous affections, we 
 may, ' after the passion is over/ have pleasure in calm 
 reflection, from the consideration that ' we have been 
 in a disposition which, to our Moral Sense, appears 
 lovely and good : but this pleasure is never intended 
 in the heat of action, nor is it any motive exciting 
 to it/ 
 
 Having shown that the loving of virtuous actions 
 proceeds neither from Self-interest on the one side, 
 nor from the Pleasure of Virtue on the other, Hutche- 
 
Francis Hiitcheson. 33 
 
 son next proceeds to show that it is ' Some Deter- 
 mination of our nature to study the good of others; 
 or some instinct antecedent to all reason (reason- 
 ing) from interest which influences us to the love of 
 others, even as the Moral sense determines us to 
 approve the actions which flow from this love in 
 ourselves or others! 
 
 This proposition is illustrated by the love of parents 
 for their children. If it be said that the parent suffers 
 when his child suffers, and that on this account he 
 is affected with a loving desire to remove the suffer- 
 ing, is not this to say that love to the child causes 
 him to suffer with it ? If so, then Love is antecedent 
 to any conjunction of interest the cause, not the 
 effect. Nature, in short, determines us to have affec- 
 tion for him ; and if so, why not, though in a weaker 
 form, for all mankind ? In truth, where there is no 
 interfering personal interest, we shall find this Love 
 existing towards all rational agents in some degree. 
 
 Love of country is itself, to a great extent t only 
 love of individuals whom, in various relations, we 
 have seen, as members of the same community with 
 ourselves, manifesting those dispositions which our 
 Moral Sense compels us to approve. When there is 
 an apparent want of natural benevolence, it is be- 
 cause the instinctive inclination is overpowered by 
 Self-interest (or, it ought to be added, by Anger or 
 Displeasure) ; but where ' this does not happen, we 
 shall find all mankind under its influence, although 
 with different degrees of strength, according to the 
 
34 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 nearer or more remote relations they stand in to each 
 other. 
 
 Before proceeding further, let us take a critical 
 retrospect of the leading features of our author's argu- 
 ment. That man has an inner, instinctive, immediate 
 sense of pleasure or beauty, or by whatever name it 
 may be called, when he becomes cognisant in others 
 or in himself of those dispositions commonly called 
 Virtuous, in the limited sense of Benevolent, we think 
 Hutcheson has demonstrated. It flows from this, that 
 by the inner, instinctive, immediate feeling, man separ- 
 ates the good from the bad in actions, in so far at least 
 as this specific quality is concerned, and discriminates 
 the approvable and the censurable. He has made 
 good his point against both what we would call Utili- 
 tarian selfism, that is, the reduction of the grounds 
 of approvableness, and therefore of Eight and Wrong 
 in conduct, to the perception of a mediate or imme- 
 diate production of 'natural good' to the individual 
 approving; as well as against what might be called 
 Utilitarian universalism, which reduces the grounds 
 of approvableness, and therefore of Eight and "Wrong, 
 to the perceived tendency of the act to promote the 
 natural good or interests of the community, and so, 
 indirectly, of the individual, as a member of it. He 
 has also shown that this moral liking does not flow 
 from the perception that the acts and dispositions 
 approved originate in the Law of a superior being, 
 to be enforced by the increase or decrease of 'natural' 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 35 
 
 pleasures or pains, although this perception doubtless 
 supports, confirms, and intensifies the moral approba- 
 tion or reprobation. 
 
 Our author, in next endeavouring to find the motives 
 of virtuous actions, is anxious to show that these 
 motives are not only not the desire of ' natural' good 
 or self-interest, but not even the pleasure of Virtue 
 itself. In his first object he partially succeeds, in the 
 second he fails. The fact that he only partially suc- 
 ceeds in the one case and entirely fails in the other, is 
 due to an insufficient analysis of human nature and the 
 ends of action, and of the character of moral energizing. 
 
 As we have seen in the above statement of his sys- 
 tem, he considers no acts moral or virtuous save those 
 which are prompted by an affection for rational agents. 
 This is to identify the moral with those acts and dis- 
 positions only which are transitive, and not only so, 
 l)ii t which are purposely transitive. His manifest 
 failure to force into this category the virtues of tem- 
 perance, under which would be included, we presume, 
 chastity and purity, as well as general self-control, 
 courage, under which would fall self-sacrifice of the 
 body for the sake of the truth apart from affection 
 towards God, and prudence with its manifold sub- 
 species, not to speak of virtues altogether ignored by 
 him, such as integrity, dignity, and magnanimity, 
 which have regard to self alone, and are not affections 
 toward other Kational agents, is sufficient evidence 
 that he has rashly committed himself to a general 
 
36 Francis Hntckeson. 
 
 conclusion regarding the nature of Virtue before 
 undertaking a sufficiently broad inquiry into the 
 specific ends of action and the Supreme end of all. 
 Had he separated the Intransitive from the Transi- 
 tive ends, he would have been driven from the posi- 
 tion which he took up, and which compelled him to 
 merge all virtue, all morality, in Love to mankind, or 
 (as in the case of the virtues of reverence, etc.) Love 
 to God. 
 
 This mode of accounting for the motives which 
 impel to virtuous conduct reacts, it will be at once 
 seen, on the theory of a Moral Sense, by reducing the 
 action and range of that sense simply to a feeling of 
 immediate pleasure at discerning Love in others to- 
 wards Eational agents. It would follow that all those 
 virtues falling under the general names Prudence, 
 Integrity, Purity, must be discriminated as appro v- 
 able on other -grounds ; that is, not immediately by a 
 sense, but mediately by the understanding. From 
 this a conclusion would follow, which Hutcheson 
 would have himself strongly deprecated, namely, that 
 these virtues are approved not in themselves, but 
 because they promote our lower interests, or the lower 
 interests of others. 1 
 
 Further, to say that we do not pursue virtue for the 
 sake of the pleasure of Virtue, because to do so itself 
 presupposes a ' Sense of Virtue antecedent to ideas of 
 advantage/ is to employ the word ' advantage 7 in a 
 
 1 It may be observed, in passing, that virtues may be displayed in 
 relation to irrational agents as well as to rational. 
 
Francis Hutckeson, 37 
 
 connexion in which it has no proper significance. This 
 word has been generally used by Hutcheson as syn- 
 onymous with 'promotive of some natural good or 
 lower interest other than the affection, or sentiment, 
 or what not, which is immediately the object of ap- 
 probation or of pursuit/ The opinion which Hutche- 
 son attempts to redargue, however, is that the Vir- 
 tuous disposition or act is in itself pleasurable, and 
 desired because of the pleasure which it yields to 
 the agent. Hutcheson confounds the history of the 
 origin of the virtuous dispositions (that is to say, of 
 the instinct of benevolence, for, as we have seen, all 
 virtue is, in his opinion, merged in this instinct) with 
 these same dispositions, as elements in the moral con- 
 flict, which is always transacting itself in the breast of 
 every man. The virtuous or benevolent affections, 
 ^ it is true, like all the passions, arise only in con- 
 ' junction with their objects ; it is others as loved, 
 not the love of others, that we first instinctively 
 know ; again, it is a supreme and perfect Being rever- 
 enced, not the reverence of a supreme and perfect 
 Being, which first comes within the range of our 
 mental experience. But these mental states once 
 experienced, we recognise in ourselves the Love of 
 others, and reverence towards the Supreme as in- 
 stinctive moral forces working in us, and presenting 
 along with other forces a claim of right in the court 
 of Will. Thus it happens that when the rational will 
 has to act, the same object may be to it the external 
 recipient of a selfish, a malignant, a benevolent, a 
 
3 8 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 heroic, a pious or an impious act ; and the question 
 to be settled is this, with which of these dispositions 
 to act shall I here and now identify my Will, which 
 is myself? These dispositions, primary, instinctive, 
 derivative, simple, or complex, are realities the 
 objects which I (that is, the Will) am first to seize. 
 But they of necessity carry with them the external 
 objects. It belongs essentially to the notion of them 
 that they externalize themselves, and connect self and 
 not-self in a completed act by means of the uniting 
 sentiment. Without this union, the identification of 
 self with the sentiment is not at all accomplished in 
 the region of the moral, but only in the region of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Hutcheson, it seems to us, was afraid to recognise 
 the pleasure of virtue as a motive to virtue ; because 
 by so doing he would have separated virtuous action 
 from self-interested action only by the 'kind of plea- 
 sure which it yielded to the agent. Thus would be 
 laid the foundation of a personal eudsemonism which 
 might justify to itself any course of action on the 
 simple ground of idiosyncratic preference. And to 
 this danger, and to a loose theory of obligation and 
 of law, Hutcheson unquestionably did expose himself, 
 notwithstanding his efforts to avoid it. 
 
 If we look, again, at his argument from the point 
 of view of the self-reference of Virtue, we shall find 
 that, in endeavouring so eagerly as he does to show 
 that the virtuous or benevolent act does not origi- 
 nate in a desire for the happiness it yields to the 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 39 
 
 agent, but in the love the agent has of the happi- 
 ness of others, Hutcheson overlooks the distinction 
 between Self-love and Self-interest ; and this leads 
 to much confusion of statement and much logomachy. 
 His two leading arguments in refutation of what 
 he believes to be a selfish theory of virtue are (1.) 
 That the virtuous affection arises in us only on the 
 presentation of the fitting object, and cannot be 
 called into operation by an act of volition merely ; 
 that, in short, it is of the nature of an instinct. 
 (2.) That when we do generous offices, we do not 
 intend our own happiness but the happiness of 
 others; and that, in truth, the contemplation of 
 our own happiness would destroy the moral or vir- 
 tuous character of the benevolent act. The answer 
 to the first refutation is that although psychologically 
 Hutcheson is correct, yet it is equally a psycho- 
 logical truth that we can, by an act of will, initiate 
 a movement towards an affection or sentiment as 
 an object. The answer to the second is, that in 
 seeking the good of others, we, by his own show- 
 1 ing, do really seek our own highest felicity the in- 
 dulgence of the love of the good of others ; and this 
 without regard to the consequent and retrospective 
 approbation of ourselves for having sought the good 
 of others. Indeed, the fact that we retrospectively 
 approve ourselves for benevolent acts, can find in 
 Hutcheson's theory no consistent explanation : self- 
 approbation becomes lost in the instinctive pleasure 
 of the act of loving, and identified with it. Eeflec- 
 
40 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 tion on this might, by bringing to light the ground 
 of approbation, have suggested the true motive to 
 the virtuous act. To separate an act done for 
 the sake of the good of others (apart from any 
 ulterior or lower interest) from a subjective pleasure 
 in the good of others, and in the particular act 
 done, is impossible, except for purposes of thought. 
 I may cultivate in myself a mental condition of 
 Love towards my fellow-men, and delude myself by 
 indulging in this mood, and usurping to myself 
 the further pleasure of self-approbation for my vir- 
 tuous disposition. But in so doing, Benevolence is 
 present to my mind only as an object of knowledge, 
 or it may be that it expends itself on subject-objects 
 purely imaginary. To seek after this pleasure is not 
 to cultivate benevolence, but rather, indeed, to weaken 
 it, and to substitute for that virtue a morbid and will- 
 enervating consciousness of the possibility of exercising 
 the virtue. On the other hand, to seek to do good to 
 others from any other motive than a purely moral one, 
 such as the realizing in our consciousness of the plea- 
 sure of the benevolent act, is itself also an act without 
 virtue, as Hutcheson himself would admit. In short, 
 there is in man the antagonism of the lower and the 
 higher, self-interest and self-love, the one strong and 
 powerful, the other lofty and supreme ; and when we 
 seek the supreme joy of our nature, we do so at great 
 cost, and by an effort of free rational volition, which 
 constitutes its moral worth, its virtuous character, and 
 its disinterestedness. That, in certain classes of action, 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 41 
 
 the good of others should be precisely the quality 
 which yields the Agent a supreme felicity; that 
 we cannot contemplate the object of our activity as 
 happy, save in and through the subject as happy, and 
 vice versa; that, in short, the subjective end and the 
 objective end concur and are inseparable, does not 
 touch the morality or virtue of the active desire, or of 
 the election of it by the will as a motive force. 
 
 Having discussed the subjects of a Moral Sense 
 and the Motives to Virtuous action, Hutcheson next 
 proceeds to inquire what common quality is found to 
 be the essential characteristic of all those acts which 
 are approved by the Moral Sense. The answer, viz., 
 ! Benevolence or Love has been already given in the 
 course of discussing prior questions. 
 
 When this doctrine has to be applied to the wor- 
 ship and fear of God, it breaks down, in our opinion, 
 by omitting from view the morality which resides in 
 the mere act of submission to a recognised superior. 
 The effort made to make this a case of love contra- 
 dicts history and the facts of human nature. 
 
 Especially forced is the attempt to reduce those 
 virtues which are usually referred to enlightened Self- 
 Love to acts into which benevolence enters, and must 
 enter, in order to constitute them moral. For ex- 
 ample, he says that since the individual is a part of 
 the whole, a due regard to himself is thus far a regard 
 for the whole, even where the good of the whole is not 
 contemplated. Not only so ; a want of due self love 
 
 OF TH7? "< 
 
42 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 would be universally pernicious, and self-love within 
 limits prescribed by the universal good is, therefore, 
 moral and approvable. This is a violent attempt to 
 justify his reduction of all virtue to benevolence. 
 
 In other parts of his writings, Hutcheson occa- 
 sionally extends the operation of the Moral Sense to 
 those powers and dispositions which have to do with 
 the moral perfection of the mind possessing them, 
 and we consequently expect to find it brought to 
 bear on those intransitive acts which constitute so 
 large a part of the virtuous character. But he quickly 
 loses sight of this relation of the Moral Sense, and 
 characteristically confines its activity to the detection 
 of benevolence in all good affections of whatsoever 
 kind. In so far as it detects this quality it approves 
 them ; in so far as it finds it wanting it is indifferent; 
 in so far as it finds it contravened it condemns. 1 Even 
 veracity, candour, fortitude, and so forth, although 
 they ' seem to be approved immediately/ are in truth 
 approved because of their connexion with the disin- 
 terested affection of benevolence. Occasionally, it is 
 true, he slips into such expressions as ' these [intran- 
 sitive virtues] are immediately approved ;' they ' are 
 immediately recommended to our approbation by the 
 constitution of our moral faculty' (p. 67) : but such 
 incidental expressions, which are generally contra- 
 dicted, implicitly or explicitly, in the same paragraph, 
 only furnish evidence of the inadequacy of his ana- 
 lysis, and show that he himself had a dim impression 
 
 1 Lectures, p. 65. 
 
Francis Hiitcheson. 43 
 
 of the partial operation of the Moral Sense as ex- 
 pounded by him, and of its insufficiency to cover the 
 whole nature of man. 
 
 Hutcheson next proceeds to show that the moral 
 excellency of actions is, where ' equal degrees of happi 
 ness are expected to proceed from the action, in propor- 
 tion to the number of persons to whom the Happiness 
 shall extend ; ' and is led to the conclusion that ' that 
 action is best which accomplishes the greatest happi- 
 ness for the greatest numbers, and that worst which 
 in the like manner occasions their misery/ Again, 
 where consequences are mixed, 'that action is good 
 whose good effects preponderate over the evil/. By 
 consequences we are to understand not only the direct 
 effects of an action, ' but also all those events which 
 otherwise would not have happened/ Hence we see 
 that those actions are recommended to us by our 
 Moral Sense as '.the most perfectly virtuous/ ' which 
 appear to have the most universal unlimited tendency 
 to the greatest and most extensive happiness of all 
 the rational agents to whom our influence can ex- 
 tend/ 
 
 The exclusive contemplation of the instinct of 
 benevolence as comprising all virtue, and as the sole 
 object of the approbation of the Moral Sense, now 
 begins to bear its fruit in Hutcheson's theory. The 
 non-distinguishing of the virtuous sentiment of the 
 moral agent from the object of his sentiment is also 
 at work, and helps to bring into view the inadequacy 
 
44 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 of the original analysis from which the whole specu- 
 lation started. For if the instinct of Benevolence 
 is identical with Virtue, and if it be the object 
 loved, and not the love of the object the happiness 
 effected, not the active sentiment of good-will, which 
 is the object of approbation to the Moral Sense when 
 it contemplates moral agents, it follows that the 
 virtue of an act is a measurable quantity, and is 
 measured by the quantity of happiness which flows 
 from it. This consequence of his premisses Hutcheson 
 accepts. The premisses themselves we have already 
 criticised, and the consequences we might therefore 
 pass by. But they suggest two remarks which find 
 a fitting place here : 
 
 First, We would observe that the moral purpose of 
 the agent, and the act itself in its external incidence, 
 are confounded. The claims of Morality and the 
 demands of the Moral Sense are, it seems to us, satis- 
 fied, when the agent selects that motive which is the 
 highest, and energizes under its direction. The history 
 of the act is a separate question. A rational being is, 
 of course, bound to see that the benevolent purpose 
 has a benevolent effect, and his volition is not bene- 
 volent if he has no regard to this. Without this the 
 moral energizing of the Will is an abortive energy. 
 But it is the quality of this energizing which is the 
 measure of the morality, not the number of persons 
 who may be the happier or the better for it. 
 
 Some of the consequences of this quantitative con- 
 ception of Virtue the author sees when he is driven 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 45 
 
 to accept the greater quantity of good on the whole, 
 as the only ground for abstaining from doing in- 
 justice to the worthless for the benefit of those who 
 are morally their superiors, and from giving false testi- 
 mony in a court of justice in favour of those whom 
 we know to be innocent ! A further consequence, 
 namely, the inferior Virtue of the agent whose bene- 
 volent acts have a narrow influence, as compared with 
 the man whose benevolent acts are productive of 
 greater felicity, confronts him ; and he exercises much 
 ingenuity in constructing mathematical canons for the 
 assaying of personal virtue, by taking into account 
 the various factors, Benevolence, the Moment of Good, 
 and the Ability. It also follows, from his principles, 
 that if a man, through a pure act of selfishness, or, 
 it may be of hatred, purposes the misery of others, 
 the Vice of that man is determined by the quantity 
 of evil which he effects. Such results must always 
 flow from a confounding of Agents and Acts, and 
 from an insufficient Analysis of the inner moral his- 
 tory of man. 
 
 Secondly. We would remark that, according to 
 Hutcheson, Virtue is Benevolence, and Benevolence 
 Virtue. Benevolence is an Instinct, and Virtue, con- 
 sequently, is also an Instinct. To what, then, is the 
 Moral Sense reduced ? To a feeling of higher plea- 
 sure in contemplating the Instinct of Benevolence 
 than in contemplating other instincts. This separate 
 I faculty exists merely to tell us that Benevolence 
 / is better than Self-interest. An admission of this 
 
46 Francis Hutcheson. 
 
 nature New-Utilitarianism itself would scarcely hesi- 
 tate to make. For the ' Social Sense,' in which Mr. 
 Mill finds the ultimate sanction and ground of Moral 
 acts and of Virtue, is capable of being interpreted as 
 Benevolence towards rational agents ; and were we to 
 accept this interpretation, the departure from Hutche- 
 son J s doctrine as Intuitional would be inappreciable. 
 On every other point, in truth, save the question of 
 an inner Sense (and even here the opposition is 
 shadowy), we find the doctrine of Mr. Mill's Treatise 
 on Utilitarianism, and of the most advanced views 
 of Bentham in Hutcheson's Inquiry, developed with 
 more precision, and argued with more regard to pos- 
 sible objections. We are thus driven to ask the 
 question, In such a system, does a Moral Sense, 
 strictly so called, find any place at all ? It seems 
 to be reduced to an instinctive pleasure in the ex- 
 hibition of an instinct, a pleasure of a more in- 
 tense kind than the pleasure which the agent has 
 in other instincts. 1 It is admitted to be no guide 
 to a man, in each particular act of life, much less 
 in complex actions, or in 'the natural tendency of 
 acts to good or evil' consequences. It consequently 
 fails to discriminate the Right, and to be a guide to 
 virtuous conduct. The work of guidance is delegated 
 to the understanding, which, having fixed the external 
 standard, the 'greatest happiness on the whole/ 
 discovers, by a process of observation and reasoning, 
 those acts which best fit the standard. The sole 
 
 1 System, of Moral Philosophy, p. 62. 
 
Francis Hntcheson. 47 
 
 function of the so-called Moral Sense, in short, in so 
 far as it is distinct from purely intellectual operations, 
 is * to determine us to approve benevolence when it 
 appears in any action, and to hate the contrary/ 1 
 
 All this departure from the line of discovery on 
 which he first entered, and by pursuing which he 
 would have carried forward Shaftesbury and deve- 
 loped a moral system richer, more adequate, more 
 full of the humanities than that of his contem- 
 porary Butler, is caused by his dread of recognising 
 the subjective pleasure of beneficence as a virtuous 
 end and motive of action. ' Not the pleasure which 
 accompanies beneficence/ but the 'love of others/ 
 he maintains, is true Virtue ; as if the pleasure of 
 beneficence could exist (save as an object of know- 
 ledge) apart from loving others ; as if the active love 
 of others did not itself constitute the very notion of 
 beneficence. It was reserved to Butler to make a 
 great advance beyond Hutcheson, and this advance 
 would have been secured had he done nothing else 
 than point out that Self -Love and Benevolence were 
 not to be opposed, but only to be distinguished. In 
 truth, one is sometimes disposed to doubt whether 
 Hutcheson ever attained to a true conception of what 
 was meant by allowing supremacy to the benevo- 
 lent affections on the ground of their contributing to 
 our own highest enjoyment. The following passages 
 from his last and most matured work, his System of 
 Moral Philosophy, give indications of this : 
 
 1 Inquiry, sect. 4. 
 
48 Francis Hntcheson. 
 
 ' Can that be deemed the sole ultimate determina- 
 tion, the sole ultimate end, which the mind, in the 
 exercise of its noblest powers, can calmly resolve with 
 inward approbation deliberately to counteract ? Are 
 there not instances of men who have' voluntarily sacri- 
 ficed their lives, without thinking of any other state 
 of existence, for the sake of their friends or their 
 country ? Does not every heart approve this temper 
 and conduct, and admire it the more, the less pre- 
 sumption there is of the love of glory and posthumous 
 fame, or of any sublimer private interest mixing itself 
 with the generous affection ? Does not the admira- 
 tion rise higher the more deliberately such resolutions 
 are formed and executed ? All this is unquestionably 
 true, and yet would be absurd and impossible if self- 
 interest of any kind is the sole ultimate termination 
 of all calm desire. There is therefore another ultimate 
 determination which our souls are capable of, destined 
 to be also an original spring of the calmest and most 
 deliberate purposes of action ; a desire of communi- 
 cating happiness, an ultimate good-will not referred 
 to any private interest, and often operating without 
 such reference. 
 
 ' In those cases where some inconsistency appears 
 between these two determinations, the moral faculty 
 at once points out and recommends the glorious, the 
 amiable part ; not by suggesting prospects of future 
 interest of a sublime sort by pleasures of self-approba- 
 tion or of praise. It recommends the generous part 
 by an immediate, undefmable perception ; it approves 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 49 
 
 the kind ardour of the heart in the sacrificing even 
 life itself, and that even in those who have no hopes 
 of surviving, or no attention to future life in another 
 world. And thus, where the moral sense is in its full 
 vigour, it makes the generous determination to public 
 happiness the supreme one in the soul with that com- 
 manding power which it is naturally destined to 
 exercise/ 
 
 In these sentences Hutcheson seems to confound 
 those collateral felicities and motives which accom- 
 pany the benevolent affections with the felicity of 
 benevolent affections and activity in themselves. 
 
 It is not necessary to our present purpose to follow 
 the arguments by which Hutcheson endeavour's to 
 prove that Benevolence universally receives approba- 
 tion, and the want of it reprobation ; and that seeming 
 exceptions are to be traced to the mere semblance of 
 Benevolence having been mistaken for the reality. 
 Every moral theory has to accept the fact of moral 
 growth and of diversity of moral practices, and to 
 account for them ; a superfluous labour, it seems to 
 us, except in so far as it throws light on the history 
 of ethical science. For it is at once evident that 
 whatever moral forces man may bring with him 
 into the world, the material in which he works is 
 so various and so manifold that the moral issue in 
 maxims of conduct for the individual and the State 
 must take the colour of circumstances, and accept the 
 limitations of experience. We pass on to the next 
 
 D 
 
50 Francis Hutckeson. 
 
 subject of speculative interest, our author's theory of 
 Obligation. 
 
 In this region of moral inquiry, we again gladly find 
 ourselves in the company of the vindicator of a Moral 
 Sense as innate in Man. The departure from this 
 doctrine and its consequences, which pervades two- 
 thirds of his Inquiry, and which is, to our thinking, 
 quite inconsistent with his leading position, here 
 ceases, and in his concluding chapter, on the Obliga- 
 tion to Virtue, if not satisfactory, he is at least 
 original and in harmony with himself. If there be, 
 he says, an instinctive determination to approve vir- 
 tuous (benevolent) action, and a determination to be 
 uneasy with ourselves if we perform the contrary of 
 it, this constitutes an Obligation. It does not take 
 the form of a Law proceeding from a superior, and 
 accompanied by sanctions ; but it is none the less an 
 Obligation implanted in us. And, even should we be 
 of opinion that obligation can be properly said to exist 
 only where there is a motive touching our Self-interest 
 so closely as to determine us to a specific course of 
 action, the obligation is then to be found in re- 
 flection on the pleasure which Virtue (benevolence) 
 yields, and the uneasiness and dissatisfaction which 
 accompanies and follows action contrary to virtue. A 
 further motive of self-interest may be found in a con- 
 sideration of the manner in which the good of the whole 
 affects each individual, and consequently ourselves. 
 We have preferred to use our own words in setting 
 forth Hutcheson's view of the obligation to virtue, be- 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 51 
 
 cause, by so doing, we are able to bring more into re- 
 lief its bearing on our previous exposition. If mental 
 weakness, or ignorance, or selfish passions overpower 
 the instinctive tendency to virtue, the business of the 
 moral philosopher, says our author, is to enlighten the 
 understanding, and to show that it is our true self- 
 interest and advantage to be virtuous ; not that 
 the- philosopher thereby hopes to stir to virtue, 
 which is beyond his power, and because virtue 
 followed from a perception of its advantage would 
 be no longer virtue, but merely to remove the 
 obstacles which obstruct the free movement of the 
 innate tendency. Law, and laws with their external 
 sanctions, may, in such cases, be necessary for the 
 support of virtue. That law or laws, however, do not 
 constitute any course of action good and right, is 
 evident from the fact that we are constantly inquir- 
 ing into the justice of laws, human and divine ; and 
 speak of the laws of God as just, and holy, and good, 
 not because they are His wil], but because they tend 
 to the good of man. 1 
 
 Thus, Hutcheson's answer to the question, 'Why 
 should a man act virtuously (benevolently) V is, 'Be- 
 cause he is so constituted that he has the pleasure of 
 self-approbation if he so acts, and the displeasure of 
 self-reprobation if he does not so act/ Other collateral 
 and external obligatory forces may and do exist, are 
 
 1 Hutchesou makes a distinction between constraint and obligation, in 
 which he is not quite successful ; aud proceeds to apply his doctrine of 
 Virtue (benevolence) to Perfect and Imperfect Obligations, making use of 
 the correlative terms and notions, Perfect and Imperfect Rights. 
 
52 Francis Hntcheson. 
 
 brought into operation in every community, and are 
 probably never quite lost sight of by any individual ; 
 but the inner, central, and primary obligation is that 
 given above. But suppose a man should prefer that 
 aggregate of happiness which unmixed self-interest 
 can secure for him, and put up with the (to him) 
 trilling pain of offended Benevolence, what is to be 
 done ? We then bring in, Hutcheson would say, the 
 external sanctions of society, and the ultimate sanc- 
 tion of Divine approval and condemnation, the law 
 of Virtue being the law of God, and the refractory 
 agent submits, under the influence of these external 
 forces, to yield an external conformity. But, in such a 
 case, he has manifestly not yielded to the obligation of 
 virtue in itself: he has recognised no supreme autho- 
 rity in it : he is hedged in to virtuous action by con- 
 siderations human and divine, which lie outside virtue. 
 In short, Hutcheson does not analyse the notion of 
 Moral Law, and hence a conspicuous defect in his 
 theory of obligation. 
 
 His analysis of ' Merit,' to which he next calls our 
 attention, is vitiated by his conception of Virtue as 
 something identical with Virtuous Sentiment, and, 
 above all, with one particular Virtuous Sentiment, 
 and by the further association of the notion of merit 
 with a deserved recompense proceeding from God. 
 
 In casting a retrospect over the preceding pages, 
 we must at once admit that Hutcheson occupies a 
 distinguished place in the history of Ethical Science. 
 
Francis Hutcheson. 53 
 
 A certain portion of the ground traversed by him has 
 been thoroughly occupied, and forms a starting-point 
 for other thinkers. He has proved that there is in 
 man a Moral Sense, in the signification of a Feeling 
 of immediate pleasure on the perception of certain 
 acts and affections, and a Feeling of immediate dis- 
 pleasure on the perception of their contraries. He has 
 proved also that this sense is uniform to this extent 
 that benevolence is a quality universally approved in 
 ourselves and others. And, further, he has shown that 
 this benevolence is an instinct of man, having for its im- 
 mediate object the happiness of others as an ultimate 
 end, just as self-love has for object our own happi 
 ness. Nor has he rendered slight service to Morals by 
 endeavouring to construct a theory of obligation on 
 the basis of the inner affection or instinct apart from 
 external sanctions and arbitrary law of whatsoever 
 kind. Unfortunately his native subtlety of mind, 
 concurring with a disposition of peculiar amiability, 
 caused him, it seems to us, to overreach himself, and 
 to fall into errors, several of which we have already 
 noticed, and which again, in their more general aspects, 
 fall to be pointed out in entering on a criticism of 
 his contemporary, Bishop Butler. 1 
 
 1 Not the least of Hutcheson's services to morals is bis subtle and 
 successful criticism of Clarke and Woolaston. 
 
54 Bishop Butler, 
 
 THE ETHICAL THEOEY OF BISHOP BUTLEE. 1 
 
 THE current of philosophical thought in the end of 
 the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century set in the direction of the inquiry, ' What con- 
 stitutes Morality or Virtue 1 ?' in other words, 'What is 
 that common quality in acts which makes them Moral 
 or Virtuous V To combat, by superseding, the selfish 
 and Utilitarian theories of morals, was the purpose of 
 both Hutcheson and Butler, and of many other writers. 
 The cognate question, ' By what inner process of In- 
 telligence or Feeling do we cognize the virtuous act V 
 was to a large extent involved in the inquiry into 
 Virtue. Hutcheson satisfied himself by finding an ex- 
 ternal standard of the virtuous act, which was free, as 
 he rejoiced to think, from all taint of Self, and distin- 
 guished by the fact that other rational agents than Self 
 furnished the motives to Virtue. In trying to work out 
 his theory, he made such violent efforts to escape selfism, 
 that he fell by anticipation into a kind of refined Ben- 
 thamism, barely recovering himself when he came to the 
 question of the Obligation to perform the virtuous act. 
 
 1 To what extent Butler was indebted to Hutcheson does not appear. 
 The Moral treatise of the former appeared in 1725, and in 1726 appeared 
 the first edition of Butler's Sermons, which, however, had been preached 
 some years before. In the preface to his second work, On the Nature and 
 Conduct of the Passions, Hutcheson says, ' I hope it is a good omen of 
 something still better on this subject to be expected in the learned world, 
 that Mr. Butler, in his Sermons in the Rolls Chapel, has done so much 
 justice to the wise and good order of our Nature.' 
 
Bishop Butler. 55 
 
 This was not the sole defect of his theory : the 'Moral 
 Sense/ or Conscience, as exhibited in his argument, 
 falls short of its proper function as a discerner of good 
 and evil, except in the one department of benevolent 
 activity. The system fails also to furnish a sufficient 
 primary obligation to the virtuous act, and reduces 
 duty to a question of secondary and external sanc- 
 tions. It fails, further, in its definition of Virtue, and, 
 like Shaftesbury's, is too narrow in its conception of 
 the ends of human action. These defects are to be 
 traced to the author's abhorrence of any form of sub- 
 jective ethics, by which the motives and obligations 
 of human conduct might by any possibility be re- 
 ferred to the pleasure which the agent has in Virtue. 
 Had he taken a more impartial view of man's nature, 
 perhaps had he been a less amiable and virtuous 
 man himself, he might have seen that reference to 
 self is not necessarily selfism ; that self-interest and 
 self-love are by no means identical terms ; and that 
 action in accordance with the latter demands all the 
 self-abnegation which even a Stoic would require. 
 
 It was Butler's merit to endeavour to make good 
 these defects, as well as those other shortcomings 
 which we have pointed out in Shaftesbury ; to seize 
 in one comprehensive grasp the whole emotional and 
 intellectual nature of man in its reference to the moral 
 condition of the subject-self; to affirm a primary 
 source of obligation in the form of a dictum of the 
 Moral Sense or Conscience, and in the same Con- 
 science a power of discerning right from wrong, not 
 
56 Bishop Butler. 
 
 merely in actions benevolent, but in every kind of 
 action, whether having its ultimate issue in the agent 
 himself or in those outside him. He escaped Selfism 
 on the one side, and objective Utilitarianism on the 
 other, by placing the source and the authority of the 
 Right in the arbitrary dicta of Conscience, and by 
 showing that the highest end of action was confor- 
 mity to Duty, on which happiness was only an 
 attendant. 
 
 Such are the general characteristics of Butler's 
 theory ; and yet, if we are not to remain content with 
 what appears on the surface and is conspicuous to 
 the most cursory reader, but demand things instead 
 of words, reasoned conclusions instead of asseverations, 
 we shall find it by no means an easy task to give a 
 clear, adequate, well-balanced statement of the author's 
 system. He is very far from making a consistent use 
 of terms, nor does he always introduce the various 
 points of his argument in the connexion in which we 
 should expect to find them. These and other defects, 
 which belong to him as a writer on Morals, are, doubt- 
 less, to a large extent due to the form into which he 
 has thrown his speculations. Had he attempted a 
 more systematic exposition he would have supplied 
 many defects which the mere attempt to systematize 
 would have revealed. It is a remarkable tribute to 
 his strong intellectual grasp and deep insight, that 
 views so imperfectly expounded should have held 
 their place as on the whole the best British statement 
 of the intuitive theory of Morals. 
 
Bis fiop Bntler. 57 
 
 Butler considers it to be the first duty of the 
 Moralist to inquire what the particular nature of man 
 is its ' several parts/ and their economy or consti- 
 tution, and thence to determine what course of life it 
 is which is correspondent to his whole nature. Such 
 an inquiry, he maintains, will reveal the fact that Vice 
 is a violation of that nature, and that Virtue consists 
 in following it. 
 
 The economy or constitution ' of any particular 
 nature, and consequently of the nature of man, is a 
 whole made up of several parts ; but these several 
 parts taken together do not give the idea of the 
 system or economy, unless we include in the notion 
 of the whole the relations and respects which the 
 several parts have to each other. 
 
 The several parts of the inward economy of man 
 are Appetites, Passions, Affections, and, in addition 
 to these, the ' Principle of Reflection/ or Conscience. 
 But these several parts do not give us an idea of the 
 inward economy of man until we realize their rela- 
 tions to each other. In investigating this we find 
 that all the parts are subordinated to the ' Principle 
 of Reflection' or Conscience, which is supreme. Thus 
 we attain to a complete idea of the economy of man : 
 and ' from the idea itself it will as fully appear that 
 the end of the economy of man is Virtue, as that the 
 end of the economy of a watch is the measuring of 
 time. So that we shall find that nothing is so con- 
 trary to man's nature as vice, and nothing more 
 accordant with it than virtue/ provided we keep in 
 
58 Bishop Butler. 
 
 mind that by * nature' we mean not merely the 
 several parts of man's c frame/ but the constitution of 
 those parts relatively to the ' Principle of Reflection/ 
 or Conscience. 
 
 Comparing man with the brutes, Butler illustrates 
 his own theory and repeats his argument, and if we 
 would estimate these correctly, we must once more 
 accompany him in his exposition : Mankind, he says, 
 have various instincts and 'principles of action/ just as 
 brute creatures have, some leading most directly and 
 immediately to the good of the community, and some 
 most directly to private good. Man has several, which 
 brutes have not, particularly Reflection or Conscience 
 ' an approbation of some principles or actions, and a 
 disapprobation of others/ ' Brutes obey their instincts 
 or principles of action according to certain rules, 
 suppose the constitution of their body and the objects 
 around them. The generality of mankind also obey 
 their instincts and principles of action, all of them 
 those propensions we call good, as well as the bad 
 according to the same rules, namely the constitution 
 of their body and the external circumstances they are 
 in/ Now brutes, in acting in accordance with the 
 rules before mentioned their bodily constitution and 
 circumstances act suitably to their whole nature. 
 Mankind also, in acting thus, would act suitably to 
 their whole nature if no more were to be said of man's 
 nature than what has now been said ; if that, as it is a 
 true, were also a complete and adequate account of his 
 nature. But it is not a complete and adequate account. 
 
Bishop Butler. 59 
 
 In addition to these instincts and principles of action 
 which promote the interests of self, but do not flow 
 from ' Self-love/ and those which promote the interests 
 of others, but do not flow from Benevolence, there are 
 the principles of 'Self-love' and 'Benevolence;' the 
 former self-regarding, the latter other-regarding. Fur- 
 ther, man is so constituted that he cannot intelligently 
 seek the objects of self-love without embracing Bene- 
 volence and the social affections. Now, to follow the 
 suggestions of all these ' instincts' and ( principles' is, 
 in a certain sense, natural ; but when we consider 
 that, as a matter of fact, to gratify ' cool and reason- 
 able self-love' is manifestly to act in conformity with 
 nature, while to gratify appetites and passions in oppo- 
 sition to the dictates of c cool self-love' is manifestly 
 to contravene nature, inasmuch as it ignores the rela- 
 tions of the parts of human nature, it follows that 
 one inward principle, that of < cool self-love' is superior 
 to others, is of a 'superior nature' or kind: and, 
 also, that this natural superiority really exists quite 
 apart from the degree of strength of the various prin- 
 ciples, and this without particular consideration of 
 conscience. 
 
 But this is not all. For there is still this other Prin- 
 ciple in the human constitution, namely, Eeflection 
 or Conscience, which, compared with the rest as they 
 all stand together in the nature of man, ' plainly bears 
 on it' marks of authority over all the rest, and claims 
 the ' absolute direction of them all to allow or forbid 
 their gratification.' Authority, says Butler, as distin- 
 
60 Bishop Butler. 
 
 guished from strength ; for a disapprobation of Reflec- 
 tion is in itself a principle manifestly superior to a 
 mere propension that is to say, superior in kind 
 or nature, not in degree of force. If this be so, it 
 follows that to allow no more to this superior prin- 
 ciple or ' part of our nature ; than to other parts, to 
 let it guide and govern only occasionally, and in com- 
 mon with the rest as its turn happens to come, and 
 from the temper and circumstances one happens to be 
 in, this is not to act conformably to the constitution 
 of man. 
 
 The ' Principle of Reflection' or Conscience asserts, 
 in the presence of consciousness, a natural supremacy 
 over all other instincts and principles ; and to this 
 natural supremacy and inherent prerogative, 'it is 
 owing that every man may find within him the rule 
 of Right/ as well as the ' obligation to follow it/ This 
 principle of reflection is frequently, but without deli- 
 berate purpose, spoken of by Butler as the principle 
 of Reflex Approbation, when he has occasion to refer 
 to the discrimination of the Right from the Wrong. 
 In speaking of Shaftesbury, for example, he says that 
 that author thought it a plain matter of fact * that 
 mankind upon reflection felt an approbation of what 
 was good and a disapprobation of the contrary ; as it 
 undoubtedly is, and which none could deny but from 
 mere affectation.' So much for Butler's doctrine of 
 the ends of action, the criterion of Right and the mode 
 of discriminating it. 
 
 The Obligation to do that which is approved is 
 
Bishop Butler. 6 1 
 
 inherent in the Eeflex Act according to our author : 
 and we have only to take into account ' the authority 
 and obligation which is a constituent part of the 
 Reflex Approbation, and it will undeniably follow, 
 though a man should doubt of everything else, yet 
 that he would still remain under the nearest and most 
 certain obligation to the practice of virtue : an obli- 
 gation implied in the very idea of virtue, in the very 
 idea of Reflex Approbation/ Certain propensions, self- 
 ish or other-regarding, may be as strong as the Prin- 
 ciple of Reflection, but the latter is, by its very nature, 
 manifestly superior to them, * insomuch that you 
 cannot form a notion of this faculty, Conscience, with- 
 out taking in judgment, direction, and superintendency/ 
 * To preside and govern, from the very economy and 
 constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength 
 as it has right ; had it power as it has manifest 
 authority, it would absolutely govern the world/ 
 
 On the question of Conscience as a distinct faculty, 
 there can be no doubt that Bishop Butler held the 
 popular doctrine. With him the Principle of Reflec- 
 tion is to be confounded neither with self-conscious- 
 ness nor with feeling in any form. At the same time, 
 he admits that it shares some of its characteristics with 
 ordinary reflection, for in an attempt which he makes 
 to define it, he distinguishes it as ' a particular kind of 
 reflection/ and in the Dissertation on Virtue he speaks 
 of it as including the ' understanding' and the ' heart/ 
 
 If ethical questions, which are in their nature dis - 
 
62 Bishop Butler. 
 
 tinct, are in the above analysis occasionally allowed 
 to cross each other, the reader may be assured that it 
 is impossible altogether to avoid this confusion, if 
 Butler's theory is to be given as conceived by him- 
 self. It would be possible, doubtless, so to evolve his 
 doctrine as to give it a quasi-scientific form, and 
 thereby a greater consistency of expression ; but any 
 attempt in this direction would expose us to the dan- 
 ger of losing sight of our author altogether, and 
 inadvertently substituting interpretations of his theory 
 for the theory itself. 
 
 In the exposition which we have given there have 
 come into sufficient prominence those characteristics 
 of Butler's argument which have obtained for it so 
 wide a reception. We shall, accordingly, confine our 
 criticism to the exhibition of its defects ; and we shall 
 best show what these are by directing attention to the 
 answers which it affords to some of the leading moral 
 questions. 
 
 The first and most conspicuous defect in the argu- 
 ment, is the adoption by Butler of what is neither 
 more nor less than the 'vulgar' Conscience in its 
 complex form under the name of the 'Principle of 
 Reflection/ No attempt is made to analyse either 
 this notion or, incidentally, any of the elements which 
 enter into it. The same remarks apply to the highest 
 object which the Conscience can contemplate virtue. 
 Hence not a little vicious circular reasoning and much 
 perplexity to any reader who insists on a precise use 
 of terms. At one time the Principle of Reflection 
 
Bishop Butler. 63 
 
 appears as a simple principle, power, or instinct, unde- 
 fined and unlimited ; at another it does duty as the 
 Feeling of approbation and disapprobation ; again as 
 the discriminator of right from wrong ; at another 
 as the authoritative or law-giving sentiment, while 
 occasionally it is represented as discharging functions 
 which belong rather to the understanding. This 
 defective analysis, however, of the central subject 
 and object of discussion is not a special characteristic 
 of Butler, but is shared with him by a large proportion 
 both of intuitional and utilitarian Moralists. When- 
 ever it is met with, it must always be impossible to 
 find a true record or accurate exposition of the 
 phenomena of ethical consciousness. 
 
 The position in the moral economy which Butler 
 assigns to Self-love next attracts our attention. The 
 distinction between Selfishness and Self-love solves, 
 for him, the question of interested and disinterested 
 action by justifying his statement, that interest edness 
 and disinterestedness are not properly to be opposed, 
 but only to be distinguished. Self-love embraces a 
 due consideration of our whole nature, including the 
 benevolent and other sentiments ; and as it thus 
 necessarily includes the good of others, it is incorrectly 
 confounded with Selfishness. So far as it goes, the 
 distinction made by Butler is valuable ; but it has 
 the defect of not adequately explaining, either to the 
 common consciousness or the scientific, the real ground 
 on which any particular act is called ' disinterested/ 
 although by its implicit assumption of the duality of 
 
64 Bishop Butler. 
 
 human feeling it points the way to the explana- 
 tion. 
 
 Still less success has attended our author in separat- 
 ing acts in respect of their quantitative or qualitative 
 elements : a defect in his argument, which from the 
 first precludes a consistent distinguishing of those 
 manifestations of Self-Love which are, properly speak- 
 ing, prudential from those which are in a special 
 sense moral. 
 
 The most fertile source of confusion, however, is to 
 be found in the position assigned to Self-love as a 
 regulative principle. ' Cool self-love/ it would appear, 
 determines the act which is to be preferred : in other- 
 words, it is competent to determine duty : but if it 
 does this on grounds of Self-love, it follows that the 
 sovereign end of man is happiness, virtue being com- 
 prehended as an end only in so far as it is the 
 supreme happiness. Not only so : in the act of deter- 
 mining duty it must ipso facto exercise a governing 
 power over the Principle of Eeflection itself. This 
 great Principle, accordingly, while it may still retain 
 its place in the human economy, as what may be called 
 an instinct of Reflection, can demand consideration 
 from ' cool Self-love' only as one of many claimants. 
 Doubtless its right to be distinguished from the ' pro- 
 pensions' as of a 'superior nature' to them would 
 remain ; and this characteristic would have to be 
 taken into account by Self-love. But, even allowing 
 for this, it seems clear that Conscience and Virtue 
 would fall under the higher genus Self-love, which 
 would control these 'principles' no less than all 
 
Bishop Butler. 65 
 
 others. If, on the other hand, 'cool Self-love' be not 
 supreme, the 'Principle of Reflection' supersedes its 
 action entirely, not only in its larger acceptation, but 
 even if interpreted as equivalent only to Prudence. 
 For this principle being a^-discriminating, and indi- 
 cating instantaneously and with unerring finger not 
 only generic qualities of acts, but the rightness of each 
 particular act, Self love becomes superfluous in the 
 economy of man, and its pretensions irrelevant and 
 impertinent. And yet so far is this limited and sub- 
 ordinate action of Self-love from being Butler's under- 
 standing of its function, that a careful perusal of 
 different parts of his sermons will satisfy the reader 
 that he regards it as not only embracing within its 
 legitimate sphere of action the sentiments, but as 
 being (1.) reflective, (2.) perceptive of ends, and 
 (3.) capable of giving to various ends that proportion- 
 ate, importance on which throughout his writings he 
 so frequently insists. If such be its function, it is con- 
 sequently entitled to take cognisance of the Principle 
 of Reflection, Approbation, or Conscience itself (all 
 these are, with Butler, identical terms) and to assign 
 it its true place and its proper influence. It thus 
 becomes a conscience above a conscience. 
 
 The Principle of Reflection, Butler would doubtless 
 say, if pressed by hostile criticism, designates that 
 which is Duty and Virtue, without regard to Happi- 
 ness ; while Self-love, on the other hand, has Happi- 
 ness alone in contemplation. Happiness is a conse- 
 quence of the full recognition of the law of duty, and 
 thus it is that the Principle of Reflection and the 
 
 E 
 
66 Bishop Butler. 
 
 Principle of Self-love coincide. Although it is not 
 specifically stated, it yet flows from the nature of the 
 Principle of Eeflection and the functions assigned to 
 it, that the happiness of duty-doing is not considered 
 to be the motive-power which ought to influence a 
 moral agent, if indeed the happiness can be said to 
 enter into the moral sphere at all in the strict and 
 stoical sense. The contradiction, however, is not yet 
 reconciled. 
 
 Notwithstanding the inconsistencies and inade- 
 quacies of statement which we have pointed out, there 
 can be no doubt that in Butler's mind ' The Principle 
 of Eeflection' was the supreme moral faculty, the 
 director and superintendent of all human action, 
 always present and always asserting its presence. It 
 is impossible to say, however, what ultimate definition 
 Butler would have given of this principle, or how he 
 would have characterized it, in the presence of adverse 
 criticism. Probably he would have pointed to its 
 characterization of itself in daily and hourly action 
 within the breast of every man. That it is a 'par 
 ticular kind of reflection/ seems to be admitted ; and 
 from this we may infer that its mode of procedure 
 is a process, not an act. The first step is delibe- 
 ration ; that is, the holding before the mental view 
 two or more differing, if not contradictory, acts, with 
 a view to the discovery of that act which, being right, 
 it behoves us to perform. Thus far we have to deal 
 with an act of ordinary intelligence, the distinctive 
 features of which appear only in the next step of the 
 process, which is an instantaneous discrimination of 
 
Jl is hop Bit tier. 67 
 
 the right, the moment it is compared with other pos- 
 sible courses of conduct. As the first step is simply 
 a special application of the understanding, it follows 
 that we begin to learn what this special faculty or 
 'Principle' is only in the second step, when it is mani- 
 festly a movement of Feeling. That by which we dis- 
 criminate, then, must be a Moral Feeling or Sense. 
 
 How does this Feeling discriminate r ( According to 
 Butler, by approving one thing and disapproving 
 another. This appears from his own explicit state- 
 ments, as well as from the fact that he constantly desig- 
 nates the ' Principle of Reflection' as the Principle 
 of ' Reflex- Approbation/ Now, to discriminate by 
 approving is to discriminate by an affection of feeling 
 which is pleasurable ; from which it follows that sub- 
 jective happiness is, after all, the end of conduct, and 
 the criterion of morality. If we bear in mind the 
 range and function which Butler claims for Self-Love, 
 it will be apparent that he cannot escape from the 
 above interpretation of his position. 
 
 He himself would probably, however, resile from the 
 conclusion to which we have brought him, and take 
 refuge in the Authority of Conscience or the Prin- 
 ciple of Reflection. The thing which is discriminated 
 is, he might say, the Authoritative character of one 
 act as compared with others ; this feeliug of Autho- 
 rity being in itself neither pleasurable nor painful, but 
 simply a new thing, a new inner sensation, to which 
 the name Authority is attached. But in the course of 
 his argument to show that the Principle of Reflection 
 holds supremacy over man's nature, he illustrates it 
 
68 Bishop Butler. 
 
 by the principle of Self-Love, which also has, accord- 
 ing to him, a claim to supremacy, by virtue of the 
 fact that the pleasure it yields is of a superior kind to 
 that of the ' propensions/ etc. In this superiority of 
 kind lies its superiority of rightful power ; in other 
 words, its inner authority. From this we are led to 
 perceive that the supremacy of Conscience is deter- 
 mined by its superiority in nature and kind to other 
 principles of action, and that on this superiority rests 
 its claim to supreme authority. But, setting aside the 
 element of intellect in this ' Principle of Reflection,' I 
 am at a loss to know how I can become aware of 
 its superiority of kind as one of many feelings, save 
 by a finer quality of sensation being yielded by it. 
 Thus, whatever may be said of duty and authority, 
 the Principle of Eeflection, so far as it discriminates 
 or discerns, finally resolves itself into understanding 
 plus a feeling of pleasure or pain ; and thus we are 
 again brought round to the conclusion that happiness 
 is the criterion of rightness. 
 
 Having found our criterion and our discerning Feel- 
 ing, we have the means of discriminating the Right 
 in each particular case. But having found them, we 
 next ask, 'Why should a man conform to the right V 
 In the preceding exposition we have found Butler's 
 answer to this question to be, that 'Conscience not only 
 shows us the way, but carries its authority with it, or, 
 we might rather say, in it/ Here the chief defect of 
 Butler is the acceptance of such an inner sentiment 
 without any attempt to analyse it, or to trace out its 
 various manifestations with a view to ascertain its 
 
Bishop Butler. 69 
 
 real character. Whether this authority proceeds from 
 the fact of the superiority in kind of that principle 
 of action which has been already discerned in the 
 second step of the conscience-process to be the right 
 principle, and therefore may be resolved into the 
 obligation or authority which is inherent in admitted 
 ends as such (an authority which Butler elsewhere 
 maintains), or arises in consciousness close in the rear 
 of the discernment of the right, or concurrently with 
 it ; or whether, in fine, it leaps out of the heart of the 
 perception of rightness as part of the act of moral 
 perception, saying in a voice of thunder, * Do this/ 
 does riot appear. We are merely told that it is 'a 
 constituent part of Keflex-approbation/ We are con- 
 sequently at a loss to know how to argue the ques- 
 tion with our author, unless we were to take up for 
 criticism the current intuitive doctrine of ' Conscience- 
 authority/ and identify his opinion with it, a course 
 of procedure which would scarcely be justifiable. We 
 must therefore content ourselves with the above ex- 
 position of Butler's special errors of confusion on this 
 the most important of ethical questions. Where we 
 expected to find strength we have found weakness 
 strength of asseveration doubtless, but a slurring over 
 of difficulties and an inadequate psychological analysis. 
 Nor do we obtain more satisfaction when we ques- 
 tion our author on the ' Supreme Good.' The Supreme 
 Good vanishes into conformity with the dictates of 
 ' cool Self-love and Conscience/ and its unity is thus 
 broken, while virtue is identified (as is too common in 
 ethical writings), with virtuous sentiments at one time, 
 
70 Bishop Butler. 
 
 virtuous conduct or conduct in harmony with nature 
 in the stoical sense at another, and with conscience 
 itself at a third. So far is this negligence carried, 
 that we find such loose expressions as the following : 
 Obligation is ' implied in the very idea of Virtue, 
 in the very idea of Reflex-approbation.' In what 
 sense obligation is contained in the idea of Virtue 
 apart from Reflex- approbation or Conscience is not 
 explained, and we are thus compelled to identify 
 conscience and the object of its contemplation, virtue. 
 In truth we find, the more closely we look into 
 Butler's theory, that there is in it a threefold system 
 of parallel and concurrent ends and obligations. Our 
 criticism on the position in the human economy which 
 he assigns to Self-Love, as a regulative and authori- 
 tative principle, justifies this conclusion when taken 
 in connexion with his theory of Virtue. For he 
 informs us that man's nature is ' plainly adapted' 
 to virtue, and that we are bound to harmonize our 
 actions with nature if we would fulfil the end of our 
 economy, the obligation to the pursuit of this end 
 lying in the admitted fact that it is an end. And 
 alongside of both these moral theories we have an 
 overriding and dominant system, of which the lead- 
 ing characteristic is a separate Faculty or Principle of 
 Reflection, at once discriminating, authoritative, and 
 the supreme end in itself. 
 
 Passing from the questions of ends, of criterion, 
 and of obligation to the question of Conscience, as a 
 separate faculty, we find that little need be said. In 
 
Bishop Bntler. 7 1 
 
 our author this vague and indefinite original power is, 
 if we look closely, found to be composed of four 
 elements, undistinguished the one from the other, and 
 to be by no means that simple ultimate power which 
 his followers usually assume, supported in this as- 
 sumption by their master's example. It reflects, it 
 discriminates, it approves, it commands. Which of 
 these functions truly exhibits to our view the separate 
 moral faculty ? 
 
 In concluding this brief critical survey of Butler's 
 argument, we are struck by the fact that he owed 
 more to Shaftesbury and Aristotle than to any other 
 philosopher. To Shaftesbury he owes, among other 
 things, the idea of an inner constitution and har- 
 monious end, while a reminiscence of Aristotle runs 
 through his whole conceptions. His ' principles of 
 action' are, generally speaking, the non-rational im- 
 pulses and affections of Aristotle ; and where Aristotle 
 placed controlling reason actively seeking a mean in 
 all passions of the soul, Butler placed the Principle of 
 Reflection an internal sense discharging the function 
 of reason and also of a conscience. Even this posi- 
 tion, however, he does not steadily and consistently 
 adhere to ; and the consequence is, that, after the most 
 careful study, we close his book with the feeling that 
 a powerful thinker has taken a firm grasp of moral 
 truths, but that by contenting himself with the com- 
 plex where he should have sought the simple, and 
 by assuming where it was necessary to prove, he has 
 failed to give forth a system which can stand the test 
 of a close analysis. 
 
72 David H^une. 
 
 TRANSITION TO BENTHAM. 
 DAVID HUME (DIED 1776). 
 
 WERE we writing a history of moral speculation, 
 we should here have to trace the influence of Locke, 
 Leibnitz, and Wolf on the ethical thought of Europe. 
 Our purpose, however, is much more limited. Having 
 traced the rapid development of the Intuitional 
 theory in reaction against the extreme sensationalism 
 and cynical utilitarianism of Hobbes, we now propose 
 to turn our attention to the revival of his doctrines 
 in a new and much modified form by Bentham, and his 
 successors in our own day, Mr. Mill and Mr. Bain. 
 Intuitionalism continued to be well represented and 
 ably taught by Adam Smith, Reid, Stewart, Brown 
 (under certain reservations), and others ; while Hartley, 
 Tucker, and Paley stood forth as the most prominent 
 exponents of the opposite school. The most interesting 
 of the brilliant thinkers who crowded the latter half 
 of the eighteenth century was David Hume. While 
 giving the weight of his influence to utilitarianism, he 
 more than any other illustrates the inroad which the 
 writers whose labours we have reviewed had made 
 on the Hobbistic doctrine. An anti-Hobbist he cer- 
 tainly is, and yet we are so far from classing him 
 with Intuitionalists, that we find in him the philo- 
 sophic groundwork of Benthamism. Although we do 
 
David Hume. 73 
 
 not propose to give a full exposition of his theory, a 
 few words will help to indicate the historical connexion 
 in this country between the eighteenth and the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 Notwithstanding the lucidity of David Hume's 
 style, it is not always at once obvious how far his 
 argument is intended to carry his readers, or what are 
 the distinctive features of his theory. This arises, 
 perhaps, from the attitude of analytic inquirer rather 
 than of synthetic system-builder which he assumes. 
 In ethics, this peculiarity of Hume's reasoning is, as 
 might be expected from the complex nature of the 
 subject, especially conspicuous. The following may 
 be accepted as an accurate though brief statement of 
 the conclusions to which he came, it being understood 
 that his mode of expression is translated into more 
 modern phraseology. 
 
 1. The Criterion of Morality Hume finds to be, so 
 far as transitive or social acts are concerned, Utility; 
 Utility, however, being only a means towards an end, 
 and that end being the happiness and interests of 
 society. The happiness and interests of society, 
 accordingly, are the end and criterion of the Eight 
 in all social acts. Similarly, those acts which are not 
 social have for their end and criterion the happiness 
 and interests of the individual. 
 
 2. The foundation of what may be distinctively 
 called the ' Morality' of acts, viz., their appro vableness, 
 or the reverse, is, (a.) in the case of acts social, the 
 
74 David Hume. 
 
 Sentiment of Humanity or Benevolence, which is the 
 source of the pleasure we feel when acts are seen to 
 attain the useful end. Sometimes it is merely the 
 agreeable feeling which we have on seeing them in 
 operation. But here Hume is manifestly loose in his 
 analysis; for all cases of the 'agreeable' in the matter 
 of transitive acts are resolvable into the satisfaction 
 of the sentiment of Humanity. For example, the 
 qualities of Decency, Cleanliness, Manner, Manners, 
 Wit, which are referred to by Hume, are all of 
 manifest objective utility. (6.) In the case of acts 
 not social, the foundation of approvableness is the 
 agreeableness of them to the person who performs 
 them, and, consequently, to others who behold them 
 in him. This presumes, of course, the doctrine of sym- 
 pathy as essential to moral judgments, but he does 
 not give the doctrine any prominence, or appear to 
 see its full importance, except in one passage, where 
 he says, The 'immediate sensation [of the social 
 qualities] to the person possessed of them is agree- 
 able : others enter into the same humour, and catch 
 the sentiment by a contagion or natural sympathy ; 
 and as we cannot forbear loving whatever pleases, 
 a kindly emotion arises towards the person who 
 communicates so much satisfaction/ 1 Those people 
 are 'virtuous' and 'meritorious' who practise quali- 
 ties which thus stir up in us agreeable feelings when 
 we contemplate them and their operation. [The 
 principal intransitive qualities cited as meritorious are 
 
 1 Sect. vii. ' Of Qualities immediately agreeable to ourselves.' 
 
David Hume. 75 
 
 Tranquillity, Greatness of Mind, Courage, Delicacy 
 of Taste.] 
 
 3. The ground of Obligation to do the act which 
 contributes to the end the happiness of society or 
 the interests and happiness of the individual agent, as 
 the case may be is this, that all men, if they will only 
 see it, will 'find their account' in so acting. The 
 virtuous is a pleasant, attractive, and much-rewarding 
 mental condition ; and it seems very absurd not to 
 maintain oneself constantly in it. If men decline 
 to do so, they will suffer from the disapprobation of 
 their fellow-men, and from want of peace in them- 
 selves. 
 
 4. Keason instructs in the tendency of acts, and its 
 operation is especially needful in all questions of 
 Justice. When these are reduced to their simple 
 elements, their relation to the happiness of society 
 will be seen, and the Sentiment of Humanity will 
 then affix to them the character of appro vable or 
 disapprovable. He maintains that presumed Justice 
 only may be, whereas Benevolence must be always, 
 useful to society ; and that it is therefore difficult to 
 say when an act is to be approved as Just. 
 
 Hume's position may be thus briefly summed up : 
 'Morality is determined by Sentiment;' and 'Virtue' 
 is ' whatever mental action or quality gives to a spec - 
 tator the pleasing sentiment of approbation.' The 
 next question in morals is, 'What actions have this 
 influence on the spectator's sentiment ? ' And the 
 answer is, 'Those which produce happiness and pro- 
 
76 David Hume. 
 
 mote the interests of society/ The third question 
 the question of a moral faculty is answered dubiously 
 thus : ' The final sentence' as to the 'amiable or odious 
 probably depends on some internal sense or feeling/ 
 
 Were we to endeavour to characterize Hume's ethics 
 in their relation to his predecessors, we should say 
 that it was an eclectic Epicureanism, modified by 
 the 'Moral- Sense 3 doctrines of Hutcheson. Bentham 
 specially repudiated all of Hume which seemed to 
 point to the theory of a Moral Faculty, but he un- 
 questionably owed to him the form of his own utili- 
 tarianism ; while to the thoroughgoing system of 
 Paley 1 he was indebted for the extension of the 
 utilitarian ends and sanctions beyond the present 
 existence. 
 
 1 Died 1805. His doctrines are considered in the Notes on Professor 
 Bain. 
 
Jeremy Bent ham. 77 
 
 JEKEMY BENTHAM. 
 
 BORN 1748 ; DIED 1832. 
 
 IN our opinion the distinctive characteristic of 
 Jeremy Bentham's moral theory is the relation in 
 which it stands to his systematic psychology. It is to 
 the underlying scheme of the human mind, and to the 
 implicit reference which is constantly made to it, that 
 we owe the favourable contrast in which Benthamism 
 stands to the theory of Hobbes. Had this contrast 
 been more clearly seen, the merits of the author would 
 have been more generously admitted by those whose 
 opposition has been too often stimulated by party 
 feeling. 
 
 Bentham held that Utility was the standard of 
 the Eight in conduct, personal and political. By the 
 Utility of an act he meant its tendency to produce 
 Happiness (pleasure, or rather the aggregate of plea- 
 sures) or to prevent Unhappiness (pain). This is 
 nowhere more clearly and succinctly expressed than 
 in the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and 
 Legislation, where he says, 
 
 ' Nature has placed mankind under the government 
 of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for 
 them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well 
 as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, 
 the standard of right and wrong, on the other, the 
 
78 Jeremy Bent ham. 
 
 chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. 
 They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we 
 think ; every effort we can make to throw off our 
 subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm 
 it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their em- 
 pire, but in reality he will remain subject to it all 
 the while. The principle of utility recognises this 
 subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that 
 system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of 
 felicity by the hands of reason and of law/ 
 
 The degrading connotations which have gathered 
 round the word Utility must be stripped off if we are 
 to understand Bentham and his system, and the term 
 must be employed in the sense which he attached to 
 it. The same caution has to be given with reference 
 to the word Interest. By the 'interest' of an indi 
 vidual or a community, Bentham meant the ' happi- 
 ness' of an individual or community ; nor did he 
 restrict the application of the term ' happiness ' to 
 those lower pleasures which in vulgar acceptation are 
 identified with ' utilities 7 and 'interests/ 
 
 In estimating Bentham's moral teaching, it is further 
 necessary to bear in mind that, while of all thinkers 
 it may be truly said that their character and the cir- 
 cumstances of their lives colour, if they do not deter- 
 mine, their thought, this may be said in a peculiar 
 sense of those thinkers who begin and end with the 
 practical, and who value their analysis only in so far 
 as it is visibly fraught with beneficial consequences to 
 society. Starting, as Bentham did, with a feeling of 
 
Jeremy Bent ham. 79 
 
 moral disgust at legal forms and fictions, stimulated 
 on his career of speculation by a perception of the 
 injustice which characterized, in his opinion, much of 
 the administration of law, and by the departure, as it 
 seemed to him, from all principle in the administra- 
 tion of affairs, unless a regard for the interests of 
 the governing classes might be called such, his work 
 of aggression would have been fragmentary, declama- 
 tory, and inconsistent with itself, had he not sought 
 and found some distinctive and unvarying standard 
 by which to test and harmonize his speculations, 
 some steady light to guide him through the per- 
 plexities of ethical and political discussion. That he 
 was deeply sensible of this himself, and that to this 
 we owe the purely ethical part of his writings, appears 
 from the fact that the Introduction to the Principles 
 of Morals and Legislation was originally printed 
 under a different title and withheld from publication 1 
 partly in consequence of the metaphysical difficulties 
 in which he found himself involved. Continuing, 
 however, to pursue his legal and political studies, he 
 found that in every one of his works the principles 
 exhibited in the Introduction 'had been found so 
 necessary, that either to transcribe them piecemeal or 
 to exhibit them somewhere where they could be re- 
 ferred to in the lump was unavoidable.' Elsewhere 
 he says, that there is not ' a single proposition that I 
 have not found occasion to build upon in the penning 
 of some article or other of those provisions of detail of 
 
 1 Printed in 1780, published in 1789. 
 
So Jeremy Bentham. 
 
 which a Body of Law, authoritative or unauthorita- 
 tive must be composed/ 
 
 The ultimate standard of reference Bentham, as we 
 have seen, found to be the pains and pleasures, the 
 happiness and unhappiness of man. This was after- 
 wards formulated into the ' Greatest Happiness of 
 the Greatest Number/ and this again was at a later 
 period improved into ' The Greatest Happiness on the 
 Whole/ a movement in Bentham's thought which 
 seems to have escaped the notice of the majority of 
 his disciples, but which was by no means without sig- 
 nificance. He, however, never rested content, as the 
 majority of his followers have done, with the vague 
 phrase ' The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Num- 
 ber/ On the contrary, he says that ' it is in vain to 
 talk of the interest of the community without under- 
 standing what is the interest of the individual. A 
 thing is said to promote the interest, or to be for the 
 interest, of an individual when it tends to add to the 
 sum-total of his pleasures, or, what comes to the same 
 thing, to diminish the sum-total of his pains. An 
 action, then, may be said to be conformable to the 
 principle of utility, or, for shortness' sake, to Utility 
 (meaning with respect to the community at large), 
 where the tendency it has to augment the happiness of 
 the community is greater than any it has to diminish it/ 
 
 Having thus rested the principle of Utility on the 
 two pillars, pleasures and pains, and having affirmed 
 the 'impossibility of understanding the interest of the 
 Public Body without first understanding the interest 
 
Jeremy Dent ham. 8 1 
 
 of the individual bodies composing it/ lie found it 
 necessary, with a view to give completeness to his 
 Ethical system, to inquire into the nature of the in- 
 dividual man. 
 
 In entering upon this analysis, he started from the 
 point of view that morals and legislation had to do 
 with psychological pathology alone, and that man 
 must be regarded solely as a bundle of pleasures and 
 pains, actual or possible. The results of his analysis 
 he gives in a Table of the ' Springs of Action/ showing 
 the several species of pleasures and pains of which 
 man's nature is susceptible, together with the several 
 species of interests, desires, and motives respectively 
 corresponding to them. This table is followed by 
 explanatory notes and observations, and must always 
 be read in connexion with his statements of moral 
 doctrine. It exhibits fourteen classes of Pleasures, 
 with their corresponding pains, interests, and motives 
 a motive being a desire of securing some pleasure 
 or interest, or of avoiding some pain. To enter into 
 these in detail is not necessary to our present purpose. 
 It will suffice, omitting what is meanwhile superfluous, 
 to enumerate them. They are Pleasures and Pains of 
 the Palate, with its corresponding interest of the palate ; 
 Pleasures and Pains of the sexual appetite, with its 
 corresponding sexual interest ; Pleasures and Pains of 
 the Sense, generally or collectively considered, with 
 the corresponding sensual interest ; Pleasures and 
 Pains of Possession and Privation, with the correspond- 
 ing interest of the purse ; Pleasures and Pains of 
 
 F 
 
82 Jeremy Ben thorn. 
 
 Power, with its corresponding interest of the sceptre ; 
 Pleasures and Pains of Curiosity, with its correspond- 
 ing interest of the spying-glass ; Pleasures and Pains 
 of Amity, that is to say, derivable from the Good- will 
 or Ill-will of others towards self, with the correspond- 
 ing interest of the closet ; Pleasures and Pains of the 
 Moral or Popular Sanction (Reputation), with its cor- 
 responding interest of the trumpet ; Pleasures and 
 Pains of the Eeligious Sanction (that is to say, of 
 religion, or the love and fear of God), with its cor- 
 responding interest of the altar ; Pleasures and Pains 
 of Sympathy (that is to say, of Benevolence or Good- 
 will), with its corresponding interest of the heart ; 
 Pleasures and Pains of Antipathy (that is to say, of 
 malevolence or ill-will), with its corresponding inter- 
 est of the gall-bladder ; Pains of Labour, with its 
 corresponding interest of the pillow ; Pains of Death, 
 and bodily pains in general, with the corresponding 
 interest of self-preservation ; Pleasures and Pains of 
 the self-regarding class, collectively considered, and 
 the corresponding self -regarding Interest. 
 
 To show that this analysis is inadequate, that it 
 exhibits too much as well as too little, that the cross- 
 divisions are numerous, and that consequently, as a 
 scheme of ethical psychology, it will not bear the 
 slightest investigation, would be easy, were it within 
 the scope of our present argument. The scheme, such 
 as it is, however, merits our gratitude, and served 
 Bentham's purpose. Having thus settled to his own 
 satisfaction the various pleasurable and painful ends, 
 
Jeremy Bent ham. 83 
 
 and having defined a motive to be the desire of having 
 or avoiding one or other of these ends, he thereby 
 defined utility as a principle of conduct for the indi- 
 vidual, and, by consequence, for states. 
 
 Pleasures, then, constituting the utilities, and Pains 
 the inutilities, of human life, it behoves man to 
 seek the former and avoid the latter, if he would do 
 right. What ! we feel constrained to ask, when read- 
 ing such a simple summary of moral duty, Can it 
 ever be right to court the pleasures of malevolence 
 and antipathy, or to indulge, without stint, in the 
 pleasures of the senses, or of power, or of the closet, or 
 of the trumpet ? Into the multitude of pleasures and 
 pains of which man is susceptible, does no supreme 
 controlling power enter ? Sum up, says Bentham, 
 the pleasures or utilities that flow from any act, and 
 put them on one side of your moral ledger, and on the 
 other make an equally careful summation of the pains 
 or inutilities, strike the balance, and if it be on the 
 side of Pleasure, it will give the good tendency of the 
 act upon the whole, and thereby constitute it right ; 
 if on the side of Pain, it will give the bad tendency 
 of it on the whole, and, thereby constitute it wrong. 
 Right and Wrong, Virtue and Vice, accordingly, be- 
 come questions of measure and quantity. In perfect 
 consistency with this doctrine, Bentham holds that 
 there can be no such thing as good or bad motives, 
 inasmuch, we suppose, as every possible motive which 
 can actuate a man must be a desire for some admitted 
 utility which is in itself good. 
 
84 Jeremy Bentham. 
 
 Now, so far as personal morality is concerned, that 
 is to say, those states and acts which confine them- 
 selves to the individual alone, we are perfectly entitled 
 to maintain that there can be, according to the above 
 theory, neither good nor bad, approvable nor censur- 
 able, virtue nor vice, in any moral sense. A man 
 may be careless or stupid, and cast up the columns of 
 his conduct-ledger wrong ; or he may be foolish, un- 
 wise, intellectually perverse : but nothing more and 
 nothing worse. 
 
 This conclusion as regards Bentham's system of 
 personal ethics is further justified by the purely 
 external character of his moral Sanctions or Obliga- 
 tions ; nor do we suppose it is one which any of his 
 disciples would deny, except those who have acquired 
 a habit of reading into Bentham what they have found 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The cause of truth, however, is never advanced 
 by straining the weak points of any system of 
 thought, least of all ought there to be a disposition to 
 do this in the case of an antagonist whose theoretical 
 weaknesses arise from a too exclusive regard to the 
 strengthening of his means of attack and defence 
 on the side where his theory combated what seemed 
 to him to be existing injustice, and promoted the 
 cause of humanity. A more congenial task is to seek 
 for indications, if any such can be found, of a truer 
 and higher view of right and wrong in human con- 
 duct than can be extracted from the above summary. 
 
Jeremy Bentham. 85 
 
 Nor are such indications altogether wanting, although 
 so introduced and so conceived as not substantially 
 to affect the theoretical development of the author's 
 doctrine of personal morality. Such indications may 
 be found, for example, in his observations on ' Good 
 and Bad/ etc., where he affirms each Pleasure to be 
 a good in itself ; that is, ' on the supposition that 
 it is not preventive [not of a quantity of pleasure 
 or pleasures, but] of a more than equivalent plea- 
 sure;' and again, in the Principles of Morals and 
 Legislation, where, in reply to objections, he says, 
 ' There are interests [pleasures or happinesses] of 
 different orders, and different interests are in certain 
 circumstances incompatible. Virtue is the sacrifice 
 of a smaller to a greater interest/ The import- 
 ant ethico-psychological truths to which such pas- 
 sages point, although unrecognised in a systematic 
 way by Bentham, manifestly influenced his thought ; 
 and, to an extent greater than he imagined, formed 
 the basis of his own moral judgments, supplying un- 
 consciously the defects of his system. When penning 
 these qualifications of his theory, he, in point of fact, 
 stood on the border-ground which separates the Ben- 
 thamite system of objective utilitarianism from the 
 higher doctrine of subjective eudaemonism ; nay, he 
 had almost obtained a glimpse of a system of eudae- 
 monism whicn restored to man a Moral Sense, while 
 finding in its larger interpretation of ethical conscious- 
 ness a fitting place for quantitative or utilitarian 
 ethics. Unfortunately, such glimpses as he seems 
 
86 Jeremy Bent ham. 
 
 occasionally to have obtained of the moral nature of 
 the individual man, and of the true characteristics of 
 the moral and virtuous act, were quickly lost sight of. 
 Nor could anything else have been expected. That 
 he should quickly pass from the consideration of the 
 ' interest of the individual/ to which we have referred 
 above, and which would have confined him for a time 
 within the sphere of subjective ethics, arose from the 
 fact that the work he had to do was in the field of 
 political morality. Accordingly, he hurried on to the 
 consideration of man as a constituent member of a 
 body politic, and of his duties to the community as 
 a subject or as a ruler, contemplating self -referent 
 duties only in so far as they immediately or mediately 
 affected the community at large. 
 
 It is in pursuit of this object that, when surveying 
 the various pleasures of which man was susceptible, 
 and each of which he might rightly indulge in its 
 turn, it was necessary to find some limiting or con- 
 trolling principle by which each man, as a member of 
 society, must regulate his conduct; and further, to find 
 certain sanctions, that is to say, obligatory or binding 
 pleasures and pains wherewith to ratify and enforce 
 the recognition of the principle. If man's acts were 
 not to be regulated by ever-varying caprice, if moral 
 distinctions were not to cease, if society was not to be 
 a chaos of conflicting motives and ends all equally 
 right and good, some supreme and regulative pleasur- 
 able end had to be found to which all others should 
 subordinate themselves. That supreme end, that 
 
Jeremy Bent ham. 87 
 
 regulative standard, was the principle of Utility par 
 excellence, the Utility of the Community as a whole 
 dominating over all minor utilities, the general 
 as opposed to the particular well-being. Or, it may 
 be technically put thus : if any man desires to gratify 
 the interests of the senses, the spying -glass, the 
 sceptre, or the altar, he must consider to what extent 
 such gratification would affect the general quantity of 
 pleasure in the State, and abstain if the balance be 
 unfavourable. Thus the extra-regarding pleasures 
 constitute a kind of outside conscience, and restrain 
 or stimulate the self-regarding pleasures according to 
 the circumstances of each case. 
 
 The first consequence which follows from this posi- 
 tion is, that inasmuch as the act of each individual is 
 to be estimated according to the quantity of pleasure 
 or pleasures which it produces or tends to produce, 
 it must often happen that many will suffer pains from 
 an act which the summation of the two sides of the 
 moral-ledger shows to be productive of pleasure to 
 a still larger number, that is, to be productive of a 
 larger mass of pleasures, and to be therefore right. 
 Hence the inevitable necessity early imposed on Ben- 
 tham and his disciples, of explaining Utility by the 
 phrase, * The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest 
 Number/ a formula which was afterwards interpreted 
 to mean * The Greatest Happiness on the whole/ 
 
 Having thus fixed the ultimate end of individual 
 and corporate action, and found the Utility which 
 controlled other Utilities and gave them their moral 
 
88 Jeremy Bentkam. 
 
 character, the next question which presented itself 
 for answer was, ' Why should a man conform to this 
 Greatest-Happiness end V To the reply, that so to con- 
 form was itself a pleasure, being in fact the pleasure 
 of Good-will, already included in the classification of 
 springs of action, the rejoinder might fairly be, that 
 the individual, having made his moral summation, 
 found his happiness-account in another course of 
 conduct ; in short, in the gratification of the self- 
 regarding pleasures. Nor, on utilitarian ground, is it 
 possible to overthrow this position, except by showing 
 the recalcitrant, that if he framed his conduct in 
 accordance with the Greatest-Happiness standard, he 
 would be thereby simply taking the surest, though 
 certainly a circuitous, way of securing for himself the 
 greatest possible amount of selfish personal pleasures 
 and the greatest possible amount of freedom from 
 selfish personal pains. Thus altruism would become 
 a mediate egoism. And this is substantially what 
 Bentham tries to show, either explicitly or by impli- 
 cation, passim. He does so explicitly, when he enu- 
 merates the pleasures and pains which go to support 
 and hedge round the supremacy of the Greatest- 
 Happiness standard. These are his moral sanctions, 
 and are classified as physical, political, moral, and 
 religious. We do riot mean to say that Bentham 
 ever fairly and fully faces the question, ' Why should 
 a man conform to the Greatest-Happiness standard ? ' 
 but as our object is to state succinctly the most con- 
 sistent and favourable theory of Benthamite utili- 
 tarianism, and as the only sanctions or binding forces 
 
Jeremy Bentham. 89 
 
 of pain and pleasure which Bentham mentions are 
 those just enumerated, we presume that they would 
 be used, in case of polemical need, as furnishing the 
 best utilitarian answer to the question, ' Why is a 
 man to do right?' 
 
 The sanctions above referred to are not specially 
 introduced by Bentham as the binding forces naturally 
 operating to cause men to conform to the Greatest- 
 Happiness end, but they are exhibited and expounded 
 as the sanctions of utilitarianism generally, and it 
 accordingly follows that they are operative 'in oblig- 
 ing individuals to a submission of their wills to 
 the fundamental or ultimate principle of all right 
 human conduct. On this presumption, then, we turn 
 to look at these sanctions more closely, and find that 
 if a man does not do right, he may or will suffer 
 (l.) Physical pains; that is, such material calamities as 
 befal a man in the order of nature, in consequence of 
 his own imprudence : (2.) Political pains ; that is, 
 such pains as may be inflicted on him by a judge : 
 (3.) Moral pains ; that is, such pains as may visit 
 him, because not warded off by the consideration 
 which other people with whom he has intercourse 
 have for his character : (4.) Keligious pains ; that is, 
 such pains as may visit him here or hereafter, in con- 
 sequence of the wrath of God. Now a careful consi- 
 deration of the aims and tendency of Bentham's 
 writings will satisfy any man that, in the above 
 theory of obligation, he did not do justice to himself, 
 still less to the utilitarian ethics. Any attempt, how - 
 ever, to extract out of the materials which he has 
 
go Jeremy Bent ham. 
 
 furnished a more adequate and more acceptable theory 
 of moral ends and obligations, would be to make him 
 see what the persistency and pertinacity of the atti- 
 tude which he took up (in consequence of his practical 
 aims) prevented his seeing ; it would be, in short, 
 to present to the reader a natural development of 
 Benthamism instead of Benthamism proper. We 
 must note, therefore, that these sanctions of the 
 Eight are purely material and external penal in 
 the ordinary acceptation of this word. Were any 
 of the numerous disciples, who have unconsciously 
 imported something of themselves into their master's 
 doctrine, to doubt this, the following extract from 
 the Principles of Morals and Legislation would 
 settle the doubt : 
 
 ' Of these four sanctions, the physical is altogether, 
 we may observe, the groundwork of the political and 
 moral : so is it also of the Religious, in as far as the 
 latter bears relation to the present life. It is included 
 in each of those other three. This may operate in any 
 case (that is, any of the pains or pleasures belonging 
 to it may operate) independently of them; none of 
 them can operate but by means of this. In a word, 
 the powers of nature may operate of themselves ; but 
 neither the magistrate, nor men at large, can operate ; 
 nor is God, in the case in question, supposed to ope- 
 rate, but through the powers of nature/ See also his 
 Logical Arrangements. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to add, that by the same 
 means corresponding pleasures induce men to prefer 
 the Right. 
 
Jeremy Dentham. 9 1 
 
 There can be no doubt that, so far as personal 
 morality is concerned, Benthamism puts no check 
 on the indulgence of the various pleasures and inter- 
 ests, beyond those which the idiosyncracies and cir- 
 cumstances and calculations of individuals might of 
 themselves put, until the gratification of them is found 
 to hurt the general utility. Further, that its govern- 
 ing principle has no inherent value or attraction, but 
 derives its supremacy from the general perception of 
 common interests, and the pains which the general 
 opinion inflicts on the purely self-regarding citizen; 
 that, consequently, the only obligation to do the 
 Right is to be found in those external sanctions of 
 pain and pleasure which are dependent on the action 
 of others, and which affect for better or worse the 
 numerous susceptibilities of the human constitution, 
 as they have been already detailed by him in his 
 pathological psychology. While these conclusions re- 
 garding the system are correct, if the system be judged 
 from the works of the author, we must at the same 
 time guard the reader against confounding this theory 
 of Use with the theory of mere pleasure and pain in 
 any Cyrenaic sense. Benthamism is not hedonism. 
 It is a system of calculation of quantities, in which, it 
 is true, all the quantitative elements are originally of 
 the same value, but, unlike Hobbism, it embraces 
 Good-will (Amity) and Love of Eeputation, thereby 
 connecting us sympathetically with our fellow- men. 
 
 The defects of the theory, as a theory of ends and 
 obligations, we have to some extent indicated in the 
 course of our exposition, and others it would be 
 
92 Jeremy Bent ham, 
 
 superfluous in these days to dwell upon. The car- 
 dinal objections to the system, quite apart from its 
 utter inadequacy as an analysis of the moral nature 
 of man, a subject which might furnish a topic for 
 many chapters of disquisition, may be brought into 
 view in a comparatively limited space. 
 
 As a theory of Ends, it is based on an inaccurate 
 psychology, inasmuch as it does not allow the Quali- 
 tative to enter into the argument at all, much less 
 as a supreme regulative element. The higher and 
 lower disappear, and all morality is merged in pru- 
 dence. This radical defect we have already noticed 
 in the course of our exposition. 
 
 The system makes no distinction, except inciden- 
 tally, between Subjective or Intransitive, and Objec- 
 tive or Transitive acts, and while fixing a criterion for 
 the latter, leaves the former without protection. In 
 acts of the former class, accordingly, a moral agent is 
 justified in acting in accordance with his intellectual 
 summation alone, should he choose to stand by it 
 and to aver that the interests of sense are more to 
 him than all others aggregated. Nay, even in acts 
 Transitive, the criterion furnished is quite illusory, 
 because the kind of happiness which an individual 
 might choose to promote in the community, under a 
 bondjide desire to comply with the criterion, may be 
 based on inadequate, low, and erroneous conceptions. 
 His desire to distribute happiness will not enable him 
 to distribute anything better than his own conception 
 of what is best, which conception rests, and must rest 
 
Jeremy Bentham. 93 
 
 on his own experiences of felicity alone, and his own 
 conclusions about it, which, as appears from what we 
 have said as to subjective acts, may be low and erro- 
 neous. We cannot venture safely to enter on the 
 question of the distribution of happiness until we 
 have settled the question of individual happiness for 
 ourselves ; that is to say, until we have formed a con- 
 ception of human life and destiny. 
 
 If the happiness to be distributed has not this fore- 
 gone subjective basis, it must rest on the will of the 
 community which we wish to benefit ; but inasmuch 
 as this means the opinion, for the time being, of the 
 majority, and inasmuch as each member of the majo- 
 rity may have made an erroneous quantitative sum- 
 mation, and the minority may after all be right, it 
 follows that there is no fixed basis for the right tran- 
 sitive act which can approve itself to any rational 
 intelligence. 
 
 Even supposing that each man were gifted with 
 supreme prudence, and could determine for himself 
 that quantitative, aggregation of pleasures which was 
 greatest, therefore best, and therefore for himself, as 
 man, the right and moral end, yet Good -will and sym- 
 pathy, although they would, according to the Ben- 
 thamite scheme, enter into this aggregation, could not 
 rightly do so in any dominant or prevailing way. 
 When, therefore, required to conform in his transi- 
 tive acts to the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number, he would be morally justified in declining to 
 do so, on the ground that it interfered with his happi- 
 ness on the whole, until he was convinced that his 
 
94 Jeremy Bent ham. 
 
 own personal aggregate pleasures would be extended 
 or intensified by so acting ; in other words, that the 
 twelve classes of interests, which have nothing to do 
 with the interest of Amity or the love of Beputation, 
 would gain by the transaction more than they lost. 
 
 If lie were not convinced, and yet were com- 
 pelled to obey laws which were based on the common 
 interests, he might justly complain of injustice, and 
 society itself would be guilty of immorality in his 
 special case. If he were convinced, the right transi- 
 tive acting of to-day might become wrong transitive 
 acting to-morrow, and meanwhile the delicate quanti- 
 tative balance be disturbed by a keener relish for some 
 of the self- regarding interests of Sense, or of Power, 
 or what not. The Prudence of to-day would be the 
 Imprudence of to-morrow. Even should he remain in 
 the same mind and conviction, the gratification of the 
 benevolent and social interests, although yielding a 
 certain limited reward in themselves, would continue 
 to be practised with a view to the reversion of the 
 twelve self-regarding interests would be, in short, an 
 indirect or mediate selfishness, under a delusive and 
 imposing name. 
 
 Further, the obligation so to act would rest solely 
 on the threats of his fellow-men. It could not rest 
 in himself, because the whole question with him has 
 been one of desirableness only, not of imperativeness. 
 Imperativeness can have no possible place in the 
 inner history of his deliberations. Nor could it rest 
 in the will of God, because, in so far as the will of 
 God is revealed in the order of His constitution, it is 
 
Jeremy Bent ham. 95 
 
 revealed on the side of that which yields the greatest 
 quantity of desirable things on the whole. And to 
 the argument that, inasmuch as he does possess the 
 ' interests ' of Amity and Reputation, he is ipso facto 
 under obligation to the Creator who implanted these 
 in his heart to gratify them, it would be a sufficient 
 answer to say that these were given to him merely to 
 help him to do those transitive acts which, in an in- 
 direct way, might bring about the largest quantity of 
 pleasures on the whole, and to reconcile him to tem- 
 porary sacrifices with a view to large returns. 
 
 Accordingly, even supposing him to be convinced, 
 there being no natural superiority in any of the forces 
 and corresponding interests within him, there would be 
 no inner sense of obligation or authority at all possible. 
 The feeling of obligation would grow up only as he 
 gradually realized the forces outside him prepared to 
 make him suffer in his ' interests' if he did not do cer- 
 tain things; that is to say, there would be only external 
 sanctions, and an external source of obligation. Nor 
 only so : these sanctions or obligations would be deriv- 
 ative, not primary, by which I mean that the disap- 
 probation of men would not act as an obligatory force 
 upon him, but only the consequences of that disappro- 
 bation as these might touch his interests. The force 
 of disapprobation or evil reputation, in itself or in its 
 primary character, would doubtless operate to some 
 extent ; but as it is only one of fourteen separate 
 interests, its presence would scarcely be discernible. 
 In so far as it was discernible and operative to the 
 extent of more than one-fourteenth, it would indicate 
 
96 Jeremy Bentham. 
 
 moral weakness in the individual who was so influ- 
 enced, inasmuch as he allowed one or two quantita- 
 tive elements to overbear so many others of equal 
 importance. The model moral man would, in fact, 
 display his virtue by giving this 'interest' a very 
 inferior force, just as the same man would exhibit his 
 virtue by giving twelve personal interests supremacy 
 over 'Amity' and 'Keputation' in the case of transi- 
 tive acts, except in so far as they were productive 
 mediately of personal pleasures. 
 
 And in truth Benthamism, as we have seen, except 
 occasionally and inadvertently, recognises only such 
 external obligations to just and benevolent action as 
 we have referred to. The sum of the possible pains 
 to the twelve self-regarding 'interests' originating in 
 the formal or informal (written laws or custom-laws) 
 power of society : the penal and the externally penal 
 is the true and sole fount of obligation. 
 
 Hence, we are driven to the conclusion that in Sub- 
 jective or Intransitive acts the words obligation, au- 
 thority, conscience, are quite unmeaning, and are 
 simply the equivalents of desirableness, or (if looked 
 at from another point of view), exact calculation ; 
 while in Transitive acts (the just and benevolent, or 
 their opposites) obligation simply denotes possible 
 suffering at the hands of our fellow-men. Obligation, 
 in brief, has no concern with morality whatsoever, but 
 properly restricts itself to the sphere of legality. 
 
 Could the ' Greatest Happiness ' of others in itself 
 operate as a permanent, external conscience or control- 
 ling power, it might serve the purpose in the matter of 
 
Jeremy Bent ham. 97 
 
 social acts, and bind communities together ; but from 
 the nature of the thing it cannot so operate. The 
 phrase has no meaning until we have settled the 
 individual's greatest happiness; and if that rests on 
 the Quantitative, the greatest happiness of man cannot 
 be morally enforced on the individual, because it finds 
 no inner authoritative response : it has only a legal 
 validity, and that always dubious and vacillating. 
 
 We should therefore admire the consistency of the 
 thorough-going utilitarians, who, unable to ignore the 
 fact of a Moral Sense, as Bentham did, find in it 
 and in what the ' vulgar' call Conscience, only a fic- 
 titious entity, an image set up within us by imagi- 
 nation of the social penal forces existing outside us. 1 
 
 1 It is scarcely necessary to say that in estimating Bentham's system 
 we have excluded the Deontology from our view, accepting the repudia- 
 tion of that work by the most competent of Bentham's followers. It is 
 legitimate, however, to refer to it as illustrating the doctrine. The fol- 
 lowing quotation from vol. ii. p. 132, which may be found in Mr. Burton's 
 Introduction to Bentham's Works, will show that we are so far from mis- 
 representing the true character and consequences of the Benthamite doc- 
 trine as to have given a more favourable estimate of it than its professed 
 friends : * Dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you, 
 unless their advantage in so doing be obvious to them. Men never did 
 so, and never will, while human nature is made of its present materials. 
 But they will desire to serve you when by so doing they can serve them- 
 selves ; and the occasions on which they can serve themselves by serving 
 you are multitudinous.' See also p. 29 of the Introduction. Again, we 
 have the opinion of two distinguished followers of our author (Col. 
 Thompson and Mr. Burton) that ' in nine cases out often' morality yields 
 greater happiness than immorality, although in rare cases it may be other- 
 wise ; and, therefore, that those who do not choose ' morality,' that is to 
 say, who do not proportion and quantify their lives, commit ' an error 
 and a folly,' and are 'blockheads.' That morality should be rested at all 
 on such a calculation is illustrative of the tenor and consequences of the 
 doctrine. 
 
 G 
 
98 Mr. Mill. 
 
 NEW UTILITARIANISM MR. MILL. 
 
 BENTHAMISM is neither Hobbism nor New-utili- 
 tarianism. It stands midway between them. Its 
 errors and defects, exaggerated in the Deontology, 
 have during the last forty years been undergoing a 
 quiet revision, which has at last resulted in a new 
 manifesto from the present leader of the school. The 
 inroads which were made on pure Hobbism in the 
 17th and 18th centuries by Cudworth, Cumberland, 
 Clarke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, and others of 
 less note, are conspicuously visible, as we have shown, 
 in the utilitarian essays of David Hume, and in the 
 ethical system of Bentham himself, notwithstanding 
 his repudiation of a 'Moral Sense 7 or 'Conscience/ 
 and the contempt with which he treated all specula- 
 tions proceeding on the assumption that these existed. 
 The influence of an advancing psychology, the widen- 
 ing of human sympathies through the artistic and 
 historical literature of the past generation, and to some 
 extent the power of German thought conveyed to us, 
 though in a somewhat blurred form, by Coleridge and 
 Carlyle, have modified the conceptions of all save 
 the extreme positivist left. 1 Mr. Mill, with his large 
 
 1 Were I here taking a historical survey of moral doctrine, I could not 
 omit to notice the modification of Paley's system contained in the Dis- 
 course on Ethics, by William Smith, Barrister-at-Law, published in 1839. 
 In that discourse, which is characterized by much subtlety and eloquence, 
 the system of Paley is translated out of prose into poetry. 
 
Mr. Mill. 99 
 
 receptive as well as active nature, accepts these 
 modifying influences, and in his Essay on Utili- 
 tarianism endeavours to reconstruct Benthamism in 
 a spirit adapted to the needs of the time, and with 
 implicit reference to those richer and deeper elements 
 of life which are the inheritance of this generation, and 
 to which the epoch that gave birth to Bentham was 
 comparatively a stranger. 
 
 We have found that, according to Bentham, the 
 f interests 7 or 'pleasures' of each individual consti- 
 tute the end of his activity, subject to only one con- 
 trolling principle, 'The Greatest Happiness on the 
 whole/ In other words, Morality, so far as the in- 
 dividual agent is concerned, is a question of mere 
 quantity, and might be determined by caprice or per- 
 versity, provided always the agent had regard to that 
 greater mass of possible happiness outside him which 
 is his guide through the perplexities of moral action. 
 Quantitative happiness and an external standard con- 
 stitute the two main characteristics of the Bentham- 
 ite ethics. Many as are the merits of Bentham, we do 
 not think that it will be denied by any who derive 
 a knowledge of his argument from his own writ- 
 ings, that, so far as personal morality is concerned, 
 Benthamism cannot consistently put any check on 
 the indulgence of the various pleasures and interests 
 which are enumerated by him, beyond that which the 
 idiosyncracies and circumstances and calculations of 
 the individual may from time to time impose, until 
 the gratification of these pleasures and interests hurts 
 
ioo Mr. Mill. 
 
 the general utility. It must also be admitted that 
 his governing external principle has no inherent value 
 or attractiveness to the agent, but derives its valid- 
 ity and supremacy from the perception of common 
 interests and the pains which the general opinion 
 inflicts on the purely self -regarding citizen; that, 
 consequently, the only obligation to do the right is 
 to be found in those external sensations of pain and 
 pleasure proceeding from others, and affecting for 
 better or worse the numerous susceptibilities and 
 'interests' of the human constitution as these are 
 detailed by him in his pathological psychology. 
 
 Although we find in Mr. Mill such a departure 
 from the strict letter of Benthamism as we should 
 have expected from a man of wider intellectual and 
 imaginative sympathies than the master, we confess 
 that we do not perceive in him a deeper insight into 
 the moral constitution of man, or a clearer apprehen- 
 sion of the scientific defects of the theory which he 
 expounds. The philanthropic zeal which characterized 
 the teacher belongs to his equally distinguished dis- 
 ciple ; and this, while giving intensity, also gives 
 narrowness, to the moral vision. The thoughts and 
 desires of both being fixed exclusively on measures 
 tending to the amelioration of society, the equaliza- 
 tion of felicities, and the relief of human misery, they 
 take hold of ethical questions only in their relation to 
 the polity of communities, and pay comparatively 
 little attention to the ethics of the individual. Had 
 they started with a more patient analysis of man's 
 
Mr. Mill. 10 1 
 
 nature, and striven to read correctly the moral record 
 written on his heart, they could not, it seems to us, 
 have rested content with the meagre exposition which 
 utilitarianism gives of the ends of human action, of 
 the obligation to pursue those ends, of the doctrine of 
 justice, and of the characteristics of moral energizing. 
 Let us advert to these points in order. 
 
 Mr. Mill (and in this he merely heads a host of 
 modern followers) has been compelled to remedy the 
 most conspicuous defect of the Benthamite theory ; 
 and explicitly enunciates what Bentham only occa- 
 sionally alludes to, without allowing for it in his 
 system, viz., the difference in the quality of pleasures 
 and pains, and the natural superiority of one pleasure 
 to another. He says : 
 
 ' It must be admitted, however, that Utilitarian 
 writers in general have placed the superiority of men- 
 tal over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater perma- 
 nency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former, that 
 is, in their circumstantial advantages, rather than in 
 their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utili- 
 tarians have fully proved their case ; but they might 
 have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher 
 ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compati- 
 ble with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, 
 that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and 
 more valuable than others. It would be absurd that, 
 while in estimating all other things quality is consid- 
 ered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures 
 should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.' 
 
102 Mr. Mill. 
 
 Again, on page 17, he says : 
 
 ' According to the Greatest Happiness principle, the 
 ultimate end with reference to and for the sake of 
 which all other things are desirable (whether we are 
 considering our own good or that of other people), is 
 an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and 
 as rich as possible in enjoyments both in point of 
 quantity and quality/ . . . 'This being, according 
 to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, 
 is necessarily also the standard of morality, which 
 may accordingly be defined the rules and precepts 
 for human conduct, by the observance of which 
 an existence such as has been described might be, 
 to the greatest extent possible, secured to all man- 
 kind/ etc. 
 
 If this be a true exposition, as we believe it to be, 
 of utilitarian ends, according to the most enlightened 
 conception of these, then Utilitarianism is no longer 
 Benthamism. Quantity, exclusive of Quality, rules in 
 a system strictly utilitarian ; and any attempt to 
 define it as being of higher comprehension is a con- 
 spicuous departure from the doctrines of the past. 
 Benthamism proper, even although occasionally allud- 
 ing to the existence of higher interests, has no 
 means of obviating the corollary of its position, 
 viz., that two lower interests must overbalance one 
 higher interest ; and if (for some special reason) not 
 ttvo, then three or four. Were there any doubt as 
 to the correctness of this estimate of the utilitarian 
 theory of ends, it would be removed by a considera- 
 
Mr. Mill. 103 
 
 tion of the theory of obligation which supports it, and 
 which is drawn solely from the influence which 
 external sanctions exercise on the quantity of the 
 personal pleasures and pains of the moral agent. It 
 is further confirmed by the fact that Bentham, while 
 tabulating the springs of action, and endeavouring 
 elsewhere to lay a basis of ethical psychology for his 
 system of ends and sanctions, never takes up the most 
 important of all the psychological questions which 
 could have come within his range the relative im- 
 portance of interests, in any other than a quantitative 
 sense. 
 
 Accordingly, we gladly note this new modification 
 of the utilitarian theory of human life. At one ' 
 bound we are carried out of utilitarianism proper 
 into a species of ill-defined eudaemonism, which has 
 no small affinity to the principles of Shaftesbury 
 and Hutcheson. There is now an explicitly avowed ' 
 gradation among felicities, and the ' Greatest Happi- 
 ness' theory is at once transformed into the * Highest 
 Happiness 7 theory. Accordingly, for a moment we 
 imagine ourselves on the firm ground of a subjective 
 system of ethics, and begin to turn the pages hastily 
 in the hope of meeting with a new and improved 
 table of the Benthamite * interests/ containing some 
 touchstone of quality, as well as a measure of quan- 
 tity. Instead of this, we are introduced merely 
 to an inadequate re-statement of the doctrine of 
 David Hume, whose view of the eudeemonistic theory, 
 spite of its want of thorough systematizing, was the 
 
104 Mr. Mill. 
 
 result of a much more thorough analysis than any 
 that has yet appeared on the utilitarian side. We 
 expect to find removed the confusion of the Bentham- 
 ite doctrine, which, losing sight of individual mo- 
 rality altogether, raises the standard of the ' Greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number/ without defining 
 wherein the true inner happiness of each individual of 
 that number consists, thereby leaving us to find a 
 motive or obligation to right action in considerations 
 purely external. Great, therefore, is our disappoint- 
 ment to find that Hume's advanced position has been 
 here overlooked, and that Mr. Mill has omitted to take 
 advantage of his predecessor's distinctions to give fixed- 
 ness, decision, and consistency to what is little more 
 than a reproduction of the more thoroughly excogi- 
 tated eudaemonism of the Scottish sceptic. 
 
 The end as well as the criterion of the individual's 
 action is, according to Hume, the highest happiness of 
 the individual ; the end of all social acts is the happi- 
 ness of society : and that which constitutes private and 
 public acts, moral or immoral, that is to say, appro vable 
 or censurable, is their conformity to these standards 
 respectively. No sooner has Mr. Mill seemed to seize 
 this distinction than it slips from his grasp, either in 
 consequence of a half -conscious surmise of the diffi- 
 culties into which it might lead him when he should 
 enter on the question of ethical psychology, or from a 
 habit of mind acquired by a too exclusive converse 
 with only one of the two parallel lines of philosophical 
 thought which have marked the history of the world. 
 
Mr. Mill. 105 
 
 He has just caught a view of the principle of sub- 
 jective eudsemomsm when he leaps aside ; and in the 
 illustrations which follow, and in which he com- 
 \bats some of the 'vulgar' prejudices against the 
 >' Greatest Happiness' theory, he allows at one time 
 the individual happiness, at another the general hap- 
 piness to dominate over his argument. The martyr 
 (to use his own illustration), even in renouncing 
 life and courting a painful death, foregoes happi- 
 ness of many kinds, not for the sake of a personal 
 happiness which more than outweighs them all, but 
 for the sake of the happiness of his fellow-creatures. 
 Now, to our thinking, the martyr performed the 
 supreme act of Eightness ; but why ? Because he 
 loved his fellow-men so that he preferred to dare all 
 suffering in order to bear testimony to a principle of 
 human conduct fraught with happiness to man here 
 and hereafter. And further, because he loved the 
 Source of all Truth so, that to have been unfaithful 
 to the particular truth for which he daringly wit- 
 nessed would have been a severance of his inner life 
 from its God, and a wilful exile of himself into a 
 region of spiritual death. The pang of such a separa- 
 tion would have been deeper than all pains which 
 man could inflict : nay, perhaps the joy of conscious 
 union with God was so intense, that, like an ancient 
 Stoic, he could not admit that the inflictions of men 
 were even worthy of the name of pain. If this be a 
 true interpretation, so far as it goes, of the motives 
 which sustain the martyr, namely, love to man and 
 
io6 Mr. Mill. 
 
 love to God, these motives are subjective. Psycho- 
 logically speaking, he has sacrificed all present and 
 future felicities of this life in order to testify to 
 his supreme felicity in the sentiments of Good-will 
 to man and of Love of God. But Mr. Mill is shy of 
 any such conclusion : he looks outside the martyr's 
 sentiments only, and although finding his motive in the 
 general diffusion of happiness, he does not seem to see 
 that as a motive this must have been barren of all pos- 
 sible fruit, except in so far as it stirred in the martyr's 
 own bosom the joy of a supreme act of Love. So shy, 
 indeed, is Mr. Mill of any other interpretation of the 
 martyr's act, that he (naively it seems to us) asks this 
 question, 'Would it (the sacrifice) be made if he 
 thought that his renunciation of happiness for himself 
 would produce no fruit for any of his fellow-creatures, 
 but to make their lot like his, and place them also in 
 the condition of persons who have renounced happi- 
 ness V The answer is, taking happiness in the sense 
 which Mr. Mill's argument gives it, 'Yes; not only 
 for himself would he " count it all joy" thus to suffer, 
 but he would gladly call all men to a like glorious 
 destiny.' It is the treatment of such practical ques- 
 tions as these which reveals the inherent weakness of 
 utilitarianism, and shows that, even in the hands of 
 one who readily admits variety and gradation in 
 human felicities, the doctrine is so interpenetrated 
 with error as to render but sorry help to those who 
 desire to look into the labyrinths and recesses of 
 man's moral nature. 
 
Mr. Mill. 107 
 
 Lest by any chance the frequent employment of 
 the word ' happiness/ and its occasional use in a con- 
 nexion in which it can only mean the happiness of 
 the individual agent, should mislead the reader, Mr. 
 Mill hastens to say that 'the only self-renunciation 
 which it (the utilitarian morality) applauds is de- 
 votion to the happiness, or to some of the means of 
 happiness, of others ; either of mankind collectively, 
 or of individuals within the limits imposed by the 
 collective interests of mankind / and with still greater 
 emphasis he adds, 'I must again repeat what the 
 assailants of Utilitarianism seldom have the justice to 
 acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the 
 utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not 
 the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned' 
 (that is to say, of humanity). Thus after having 
 raised our hopes by distinguishing kinds of human 
 felicity, he fails to furnish us with any scientific, 
 graduated classification of these felicities, and quickly 
 losing sight of the subjective ground on which he had 
 for a moment taken his stand when enunciating the 
 qualitative element, he falls back into the old Ben- 
 thamite position, and offers us the 'general utility' 
 as the standard of each and every act. Accordingly, 
 while we gladly, under Mr. Mill's guidance, translate 
 the phrase, 'the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number/ into 'the highest happiness of the greatest 
 number/ we find that, even in his good company, we 
 still find ourselves furnished with only an external 
 standard of right, which can have only external 
 
io8 Mr. Mill. 
 
 sanctions. At best, and under the most favourable 
 interpretation which can be given of it, an objective 
 eudaemonism is all that is offered in place of the 
 Benthamite utilitarianism. 
 
 Nay, on close examination we find that the seeming 
 gift is, after all, only an empty and illusory phrase. 
 For, how can I ascertain the highest happiness of a 
 community, that is to say, of a number of men whom 
 accident or design has brought within each other's 
 influence, without first knowing wherein consists the 
 happiness of each man as man not of this, that, or 
 the other particular individual, but of man. Having 
 ascertained this, either I as an agent am to be guided 
 by this ascertained happiness, which now becomes my 
 individual happiness and my duty, even in those 
 acts which affect others ; or (and this is the sole 
 alternative) I am to allow the happiness of the 
 majority to be the governing principle of my actions, 
 simply because the majority have concurred in think- 
 ing this to be my duty. 
 
 That this is felt by Mr. Mill to be the alternative, 
 appears from his anxiety to take measures for creating 
 in man a habit of mind in harmony with the general 
 interest of the whole. This is to be done by so con- 
 structing the State machinery 'that laws and social 
 arrangements should place the happiness or (as speak- 
 ing practically it may be called) the interest of every 
 individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the 
 interest of the whole ;' and secondly, by deliberately 
 making use of education and opinion to establish in the 
 
Mr. Mill. 109 
 
 mind of every individual an indissoluble association 
 between his own happiness and the good of the whole, 
 so that not only he may be unable to conceive the 
 possibility of happiness to himself consistently with 
 conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a 
 direct impulse to promote the general good may be 
 in every individual one of the habitual motives of 
 action. Now, cleverly as this doctrine is pro- 
 pounded, it will be found, when narrowly inspected, 
 to be simply a re-statement of pure Benthamism, 
 and even to contain diluted Hobbism. The New- 
 utilitarianism, accordingly, notwithstanding its more 
 explicit enunciation of quality in felicities, thus 
 exposes its inability to find for itself any scientific 
 basis save that provided by Bentham, unless it moves 
 a step further, and wholly identifies itself with 
 subjective ethics. The action of the State, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Mill, is to endow men with a kind 
 of factitious conscience ; and men will further be 
 taught that they are consulting their own interests 
 in yielding to the general opinion of the com- 
 munity. They are, in point of fact, to be so in- 
 structed that they will see that by giving away a 
 little now, they will secure a return of much at some 
 future day, through the operation of that very rule 
 which they are perhaps grudgingly obeying. In 
 short, to use the words of David Hume, if men will 
 conform their conduct to the principle of utility, they 
 will ' find their account in it.' This is surely to exag- 
 gerate Benthamism ; for, when fairly estimated, what 
 
no Mr. Mill. 
 
 is this but to say that the supreme standard of conduct 
 is a man's own individual felicity, excluding 'benevo- 
 lence, from among the number of his felicities, a doc- 
 trine which Bentham would never have sanctioned. 
 At best it places benevolence on a level with felicities 
 of other kinds, and thereby brings us back into the 
 region of pure quantitative ethics. 
 
 If Mr. Mill should reply (as from one passage we 
 infer that he would) that a portion, and a large por- 
 tion, of the happiness of each moral agent arises out 
 of the gratification of the instinct of Good-will, and 
 that the gratification of this instinct, as well as of 
 other and lower felicities, is indissolubly bound up 
 with ' an impulse to promote the general good/ this 
 is simply to utter the identical proposition, that the 
 gratification of the instinct of Good- will is bound up 
 with the gratification of the instinct of Good- will : 
 and if we then go on to ask, ' Why should I, a free 
 agent, gratify my good- will more than my self-will V 
 the only additional inducement which can be offered 
 to me is, as we have already indicated, that by so 
 doing I secure a reversion of many other felicities 
 in addition to the present possession of the felicity of 
 benevolence. I thus, as it were, put out to usury the 
 capital of my benevolence, and, while enjoying the 
 luxury of possessing it, I, at the same time, secure a 
 large dividend out of the general stock of felicities. 
 It is because this is dimly felt to be in the long-run an 
 intellectual calculation an arithmetical summation 
 that utilitarians urge so vehemently the importance of 
 
Mr. Mill. 1 1 1 
 
 forming the opinions and mental habits of the people ; 
 and it is because it is an intellectual calculation that 
 a man may be not only excused for working the 
 sum in a different way from Bentham or Mr. Mill, 
 but be held morally blameless if he chooses to direct 
 his life on the principle of pursuing only the self-re- 
 garding pleasures ; unless it be maintained that that 
 man is blameworthy who declines to accept the pre- 
 valent opinion of a community as Moral law. 
 
 If Mr. Mill, in evasion of the grosser consequences 
 of his doctrine, should fall back on the glimpse of sub- 
 jective eudaemonism which he enjoyed when speaking 
 of the quality as opposed to the quantity of human 
 felicities, and should affirm that the moral agent above 
 referred to is blameworthy because he has refused to 
 follow after that felicity which is the supreme and 
 governing felicity of a normal nature, we rejoin by in- 
 quiring, 'How is this ascertained V Should Mr. Mill 
 meet us, as in one place he substantially does, with the 
 reply, * By the common consent of all men who have 
 experienced this as well as the other felicities ;' we then 
 lead him to this unexpected conclusion, that inasmuch 
 as it is by a comparison of our inner feelings that we 
 detect certain qualities in the various felicities of which 
 we are susceptible, and inasmuch as that felicity, which 
 reasoning consciousness tells us is the highest, is also 
 the felicity which, ipso facto, and by Divine right, is 
 entitled to control all other felicities, and be the end 
 of human action, we say, since these things are so, 
 the standard of Morality may be felicity, but it is the 
 
1 1 2 Mr. Mill. 
 
 felicity of Man subjective felicity, subjective in rela- 
 tion to the reason of Man as Man, and that in this sub- 
 jective felicity each individual finds revealed his own 
 true Duty and Happiness. In this subjective eudse- 
 monism new-utilitarianism must end, or it must revert 
 to the pure Benthamite doctrine, which ultimately if 
 not also explicitly as in the case of Hobbes rests the 
 supreme and guiding principle of human conduct on 
 the general opinion or will of the community, and en- 
 forces it by the pains and pleasures which the com- 
 munity holds in its hand, supporting it by certain 
 additional reversionary advantages w^hich arise from 
 obeying the current law, customary or written. Our 
 hope and our belief is, that it is in a subjective eudse- 
 monism that new-utilitarianism is destined to issue ; 
 and further, that in such a system of subjective eudse- 
 monism, based on a thorough analysis of emotional 
 states, and of their association with the sentiment of 
 Law and Duty, is to be found the reconciliation of 
 the long opposed schools of ethical thought. 
 
 Great as are the self-contradictions and confu- 
 sions characteristic of this new-utilitarianism in its 
 treatment of the standard or criterion of rightness 
 in conduct, these defects are still more conspicuous 
 in its treatment of the sanctions of rightness. It has 
 been necessary, in following Mr. Mill's line of argu- 
 ment, to associate this question of obligation to some 
 extent with that of the separate and prior question 
 of the criterion of rightness ; but the question itself 
 
r 
 
 Mr. Mill. 113 
 
 is one which demands, and will repay, separate con- 
 sideration. The question, ' Why is a man to adapt 
 his acts to the promotion of the collective interests of 
 the community V is the crucial question of ethics, 
 and tests, more than any other, the soundness of 
 ethical analysis. 
 
 It is not to be doubted that Mr. Mill is right in 
 thinking that that class of obligatory considerations 
 distinguished as external sanctions, belongs to the 
 utilitarian morality quite as much as to any other 
 possible system ; but the same cannot be said of 
 the internal sanctions. There is some vagueness in 
 the treatment of this question of sanctions in Ben- 
 tham's hands ; and we do not find that Mr. Mill 
 has done anything to remove it. An external sanc- 
 tion, in the strictest sense, is a force operating on a 
 man ab extra, inducing or compelling him to do a 
 certain act. These sanctions generally admit of 
 being referred to one of two classes the sanction of 
 the Approbation of man, or the sanction of the Ap- 
 probation of God. But it is evident that these two 
 sanctions may be efficacious in two ways, which 
 we may distinguish as the direct and indirect, or 
 the primary and secondary. Bentham rests their 
 force on the consequences which may now from 
 them, beneficial or detrimental, to other (and as we 
 should say, lower) ' interests/ than the love of the 
 approbation of man and the love of the approbation 
 of God in themselves. The same tendency exhibits 
 itself in the majority of utilitarian writers. Now, 
 
 H 
 
H4 Mr. Mill. 
 
 while we admit the force of these secondary or in- 
 direct consequences of sanctions originating ab extra, 
 it is not to be denied that the mere displeasure of 
 our fellow-men, and still more the displeasure of the 
 Almighty, are in themselves a ground of moral pain, 
 just as their opposites are sources of a high feli- 
 city. As was to be expected from Mr. Mill's recogni- 
 tion of the qualitative element in ends and motives, 
 the direct or primary operation of the external sanc- 
 tions also finds a place in his system, although it is 
 not drawn out as a distinguishing characteristic of 
 New-utilitarianism, but merely indicated in a general 
 way, thus : ' [The external sanctions] are the hope of 
 favour and the fear of displeasure from our fello\v- 
 creatures or from the Euler of the universe, along 
 with whatever we may have of sympathy or affection 
 for them, or of love and awe of Him inclining us to 
 do His will independently of selfish consequences.' 
 This, along with other passages, may be accepted as an 
 intimation by Mr. Mill that he includes, among moral 
 sanctions, the primary pains and pleasures of human and 
 divine approbation as well as the secondary or deriva- 
 tive. If this be so, it is of importance to remark the 
 conclusion to which this leads in the department of 
 ethical psychology ; namely, that man has an instinc- 
 tive or innate sentiment of love of Approbation. If 
 we add this to the instinctive sentiment of Good-will, 
 which we, some pages back, deduced as a necessary con- 
 sequence from Mr. Mill's doctrine of ends, we have the 
 satisfaction of finding that Mr. Mill's ethical system, 
 
Mr. Mill. 115 
 
 if fully exhibited, would begin with claiming for man 
 certain sentiments as instinctive or innate. If we are 
 right, Mr. Mill's New-utilitarianism requires revision, 
 and must ultimately take the form of an explicit 
 subjective eudaemonism ; if we are wrong, much of 
 what might be called the virtuous and sentimental 
 halo in which he continues to envelop the bald doc- 
 trine of objective utility is shown to be no longer the 
 native and self-produced atmosphere of his doctrine, 
 but a bright reflection caught from the glory of an- 
 other and a better system. 
 
 Let us now pass to the question of internal sanc- 
 tions, that is to say, sanctions that originate within, 
 for all sanctions are ultimately in their effect internal. 
 Mr. Mill's internal sanctions and herein there is a 
 wide departure from the position of the Old-utilitarian 
 ism and a large addition to its moral resources may 
 be summed up as (l.) The subjective feeling of duty; 
 (2.) A conviction of the community and harmony of 
 our aims and interests with those of our fellow-men. 
 The latter is the ultimate sanction of the ' Greatest- 
 happiness' morality, the feeling of ' duty' being 
 associated with it more or less closely according to 
 the clearness of the apprehension or the education of 
 the individual agent. Now, if we consider this ulti- 
 mate internal sanction or inner binding force, we find 
 that it may be analysed into two elements : first, an 
 intellectual perception on the part of each individual 
 member of society, that his own interests can be pro- 
 
n 6 Mr. Mill. 
 
 moted only if subordinated to the promotion of the 
 general interest, which is a merely prudential, calcu- 
 lating, selfish, and quantitative consideration, and 
 throws us back into the crudest form of Utilitarianism ; 
 secondly, a feeling that his happiness is imperfect, 
 unless attained with due regard to the superior claims 
 of the happiness of the community of which he forms 
 a part. Mr. Mill, in his argument, does not carry out 
 this distinction ; on the contrary, the two elements of 
 his ultimate sanction are so inextricably intertwined as 
 to lead to a painful confusion in the exposition. The 
 former of the two elements we at once set aside as 
 already disposed of in the consideration of right ends, 
 and as unworthy even of New-utilitarianism, much 
 more of any subjective theory of obligation. The 
 second element seems to be seized by Mr. Mill in 
 those passages in which he refers to the basis of ' natural 
 sentiment, which lies at the foundation of the ultimate 
 utilitarian sanction/ ' This firm foundation/ he says, 
 ' is that of the social feelings of mankind ; the desire 
 to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is 
 already a powerful principle in human nature, and 
 happily one of those which tend to become stronger, 
 even without express inculcation from the influences 
 of advancing civilisation/ And further on he says, 
 ' Whatever amount of this feeling a person has, he is 
 urged by the strongest motives, both of interest and 
 of sympathy, to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of 
 his power encourage it in others : ' ' The smallest 
 germs of the feeling are laid hold of and encouraged 
 
Mr. Mill. 1 1 7 
 
 by the contagion of sympathy and the influences of 
 education ; and a complete web of corroborative 
 association is woven round it by the powerful agency 
 of the external sanctions/ From all which it follows, 
 that the basis of the ultimate sanction, and, conse- 
 quently, the ultimate sanction itself of the Eight, is, 
 according to Mr. Mill, neither more nor less than the 
 Social Feeling which is instinctive in man, as in many 
 other animals, and which, apart from ulterior considera- 
 tions of interest, forbids his ever permanently regarding 
 himself as a mere unit, and compels him to regard 
 himself as one of a community, and to have supreme 
 regard to that community in all that he does. 
 
 But in so far as this is a feeling, it is neither more 
 nor less than sympathy of man with man a sym- 
 pathy causing him to court the company of his kind, 
 and to understand their pleasures and their pains 
 through his own. We admit the soundness of this 
 sympathetic basis so far, and recognise in it a 
 foundation on which skilful politicians may, in the 
 course of generations, erect a superstructure of regard 
 for the interests of others ; nay more, of supreme 
 regard for those interests. Without this basis of 
 natural sympathy, it would be impossible to speak 
 intelligently or intelligibly of the common interest, 
 or show how a sovereign regard for it re-acts in 
 a thousand ways on the interests of the individual 
 who is required to take it as his ethical standard. 
 Having served this purpose, however, its power is ex- 
 hausted. It gives the politician facilities for bringing 
 
u8 Mr. Mill. 
 
 external sanctions to bear on his fellow-men, whether 
 these be the external sanctions which affect his senti- 
 ments, or those which affect personal felicities of a 
 lower quality. Mr. Mill's instinctive sympathetic 
 social sense renders all this possible ; but having done 
 this it can do no more. To attribute more to it, and 
 to elevate it into the inner sanction of the Eight, is 
 to mistake the nature of sympathy. Through sym- 
 pathy we understand what is in others, and we may 
 also be drawn towards them because of their likeness 
 to ourselves ; but no movement of active interest in 
 their welfare, not even a distant regard for it, could 
 arise without an inner moving force the force of 
 love, good-will, or benevolence. 
 
 Does Mr. Mill mean to convey all this as implied in 
 the sympathetic social sense ? He certainly hovers 
 round the active side of the sentiment, as if he would 
 fain appropriate it as the ultimate binding force of 
 utilitarianism. If it be not implicitly contained 
 in Mr. Mill's social sense, then it is manifestly vain 
 to talk of there being any inner sanction of utili- 
 tarianism, or any ultimate sanction whatsoever, other 
 than those external sanctions, primary and derivative, 
 of which we have already spoken. If, on the other 
 hand, the active sentiment of good-will be implicitly 
 contained in the social sense, then the ultimate sanc- 
 tion of the ' Greatest-Happiness' morality is the 
 inner force which stimulates us to achieve for our- 
 selves the subjective felicity of an active good-will, 
 and which inflicts pain if this other-regarding senti- 
 
Mr. Mill. 1 1 9 
 
 ment be superseded by the self-regarding motives. 
 Disguise it as we may, the force which ultimately 
 and chiefly impels us to shape our conduct with a 
 supreme regard to the general well-being, is this sub- 
 jective felicity of an active good- will. Does it not 
 follow, then, that our ethical psychology must recog- 
 nise in man an innate sentiment of good-will, and 
 that inasmuch as this sentiment is the chief motive- 
 power influencing the individual's acts, the satisfac- 
 tion of this sentiment is also the purpose or end of 
 the individual's activity ? To ask even the New- 
 utilitarian explicitly to admit this, would be to re- 
 quire him to substitute subjective ends for objective 
 ends as the standard of lightness in acting. But 
 should he do so, he need fear no detriment to the in- 
 terests of humanity ; for while, among conflicting 
 motives and ends, good-will, as motive and end, is 
 to reign supreme, it is manifest that the moment the 
 individual agent has achieved inner harmony and 
 moral unity by the identification of his will with the 
 other-regarding sentiment, his next business is to see 
 that he does not fail of his purpose and that the 
 benevolent activity is not abortive. His act has an 
 outer history in the future, no less than his energizing 
 has had a subjective history in the past. He must 
 see to it that the suggestions of good-will are truly 
 so designed as to achieve their objective end the 
 highest happiness of mankind. His energizing has 
 been moral, right, praiseworthy, good. He must 
 make sure that the results of the energizing are apt, 
 
1 20 Mr. Mill. 
 
 fit, wise, intelligent. To discover this, he is again 
 necessarily thrown back on subjective ethics, and is 
 compelled to form for himself a scheme, however 
 crude, of man's nature and of his true good. 
 
 Were New-utilitarianism once distinctly to take 
 up this subjective eudaemonistic position, a great step 
 would be made towards a reconciliation with the In 
 tuitional school For the latter school, when ade- 
 quately represented, does not omit from its system 
 the external sanctions of the right, or the inner sanc- 
 tion of felicity in acting in conformity to the right. 
 Its chief deviation from a subjective eudaemonism is 
 to be found in its doctrine of an inner law as at 
 once, arbitrarily and without regard to felicity, dis- 
 criminating the Eight, and authoritatively imposing 
 the obligation to do it. 
 
 Mr. Mill's chapter on sanctions is followed by one 
 which aims at giving the proof of the utilitarian 
 doctrine. The argument runs thus : Questions about 
 ends are questions about things desirable. The Utili- 
 tarian doctrine is, that Happiness is alone desirable 
 as an end, all other desirable things being only means 
 to that end. That Happiness is an end, can be 
 proved only by appealing to the consciousness of each, 
 and showing that each desires it for himself. If indi- 
 vidual happiness is desirable as an end, it follows that 
 the aggregate happiness, or the happiness of the sum 
 of individuals, is desirable. But Happiness, indi- 
 vidual and aggregate, is not merely an end it is 
 
Mr. Mill. 1 2 1 
 
 the sole final end. It is true that virtue is also 
 desired as an end in a certain sense ; but this and 
 certain other seeming ends are in truth only means 
 to the final end, happiness. Virtue is desired as 
 a part of happiness, and as a means to it. ' What- 
 ever/ he says, * is desired otherwise than as a 
 means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately 
 to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, 
 and is not desired for itself, until it has become so. 
 Those who desire Virtue for its own sake, desire it 
 either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or 
 because the consciousness of being without it is a 
 pain, or for both reasons united.' The validity of the 
 proof depends on its being a fact that human nature 
 is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not 
 either a part of happiness, or a means of happiness. 
 For evidence of this, we can only appeal to the con- 
 sciousness of men, which will respond that ' to desire 
 anything except in proportion as the idea of it is 
 pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility/ 
 We set aside for the time Mr. Mill's notion of virtue. 
 Like his notion of duty (to which also we here only 
 make a passing allusion), it is derived from a vague 
 and confused popular interpretation of popular terms. 
 It would be easy to show that in the case of the latter 
 term, his notion is as inadequate as in the case of the 
 former it is a misapprehension. We content ourselves 
 with asking, ' Assuming the validity of the above argu- 
 ment, what has been proved ? ' That Happiness is the 
 sole desirable end of the individual's action, and by con- 
 
122 Mr. Mill. 
 
 sequence of the action of the sum of individuals, that 
 is to say, of each of all individuals ; the latter part of 
 the proposition being simply a larger statement of the 
 former part. Without entering into the logomachy 
 of happiness ends, and virtue ends, and duty ends, 
 we would take up Mr. Mill's own position for a 
 moment, and ask, whether the above propositions do 
 distinctly enounce that the final end, and, therefore, 
 the ultimate test or criterion of rightness for each 
 individual agent, is the individual's Happiness ? If 
 this be so and, with the best intentions, we cannot 
 see that Mr. Mill's argument admits of any other in- 
 terpretation we find ourselves quite away from 
 the ground of utilitarianism, as again and again 
 insisted on by himself, and thrown into the arms of a 
 subjective eudsemonism. Mr. Mill, in truth, hovers 
 on the confines of this region from the first page of 
 his book to the last, and consequently, in his rehabili- 
 tation of Benthamism, he has been led into manifold 
 assumptions in argument, and inconsistencies of lan- 
 guage ; but now he seems to have fairly crossed the 
 border, and to find himself permanently settled in a 
 new region the region of subjective ethics. 
 
 And yet, blind to the true significance of his own 
 utterances, he remains so hampered by the Bentham- 
 ite net- work which he wove round his intellect in 
 his youth, that he is betrayed in one portion of his 
 argument into defining the happiness which is the 
 end of life and of morality as an aggregate of many 
 pleasurable ingredients, thereby losing sight of the 
 
Mr. Mill. 123 
 
 moral question altogether, and identifying happi- 
 ness as a test of action with happiness in the vulgar 
 acceptation- a resultant, pleasurable self-complacency. 
 Why, even according to his most explicit statements 
 elsewhere, this is not a true definition even of the end 
 and criterion of those acts of a man which directly or 
 indirectly affect others ; for the happiness of others 
 by which conduct is to be tested is not such quanti- 
 tative happiness which would give us a system of 
 pure hedonism but the highest happiness of others, 
 even though the attaining of this should cause the 
 agent to subject both himself and others to grievous 
 toils and pains. 
 
 When next we approach Mr. Mill's doctrine of 
 Justice, which occupies a large portion of his book, 
 we find ourselves going over again the argumentative 
 ground already traversed ; but on this branch of the 
 ethical question, if the Old- utilitarian position was 
 strong, that of the New-utilitarian is almost impreg- 
 nable. Admitting this, and also perceiving that New- 
 utilitarians and Intuitionalists are in this practical 
 region substantially at one, we are naturally led to 
 inquire into the grounds of this sudden reconciliation. 
 The reconciliation is accounted for by the fact that the 
 Intuitionalist has here left behind him moral ques- 
 tions, as he rightly understands morality, and is con- 
 cerned solely with those overt and transitive acts which 
 affect the well-being, moral and physical, of his fellow- 
 men. Accordingly, he can cordially unite with the 
 
124 Mr. Mill. 
 
 New-utilitarian in the objective end of all transitive 
 acts, and with him recognise the * highest' happiness 
 of the community as the criterion of these. In this 
 region of what might be called distributive morality, 
 there is no conflict. In truth, were the utilitarian but 
 once for all clearly to see that his discussions for the 
 most part do not revolve round the questions of ethics 
 strictly speaking, but have to do only with political 
 ethics, which concerns itself with the distribution of 
 felicities, the way would be cleared for the mutual 
 understanding of the opposing schools of philosophy. 
 
 The doctrine of Justice, we have said, in its objective 
 relations can call forth no reclaiming statement from 
 Intuitionalists, as we understand intuitionalism : but 
 when the question necessarily arises, < What is the 
 sentiment of Justice?' psychologically speaking, and 
 ' What are the sanctions of Just willing V the conflict 
 is resumed with as keen hostility as ever. Mr. Mill 
 tells us that ' whatever is moral' in the sentiment of 
 Justice arises ' from the idea of expediency' a posi- 
 tion which carries him back as far as Hobbes, and far 
 away from the subjective theory towards which in 
 other parts of his essay he seems to be approximating. 
 
 To enter upon this large question with due regard to 
 its importance would involve very maay pages of dis- 
 cussion, and has in its chief aspects been anticipated 
 elsewhere. 1 We content ourselves, therefore, with 
 pointing out that both the Old and the New-utilitarian 
 rest the interpretation and obligation of the just act, as 
 
 1 Philosophy of Ethics, chapter on Justice. 
 
Mr. Mill. 125 
 
 of all morality, on external sanctions. The Old-utili- 
 tarian finds its obligatoriness in sanctions which origin- 
 ate in the will of others than the agent. The New- 
 utilitarian adds, or at least may consistently add, to 
 those outward penal sanctions, the inner reproaches of 
 conscience, although he has not yet ventured to define 
 what he means by these. This inadequate view of 
 the obligation of Justice compels both schools of 
 utilitarians to look persistently only at the negative 
 aspect of the question, and to offer a definition of the 
 sentiment of Injustice for a definition of the senti- 
 ment of Justice practically identifying both with 
 what is only a partial definition of the former, namely, 
 the desire to inflict retaliatory punishment. 1 This 
 negative aspect of the sentiment is certainly chrono- 
 logically prior in the experience of man to the positive. 
 But though it is thus the beginning, it is not therefore 
 the source or fountain of the positive sentiment. 
 
 It follows also, from the view of obligation taken by 
 both old and new utilitarians, that the specific and 
 differentiating characteristic of a right or * rights' 
 which enters into both the notion and the sentiment 
 of Justice, is supposed to be adequately indicated by 
 saying that it is resolvable into 'an apprehended hurt 
 to some assignable person or persons on the one hand, 
 and a desire to punish on the other/ 2 The whole 
 sentiment of Justice, therefore, of which the notion or 
 feeling of a right forms confessedly only a part, is 
 thus represented as differing from the latter solely in 
 
 1 Pp. 76-78 of Mill's Utilitarianism. ' 2 Ibid. p. 79. 
 
126 Mr. Mill. 
 
 the fact of the superinduction -of the social feeling. 
 But inasmuch as the apprehension of a hurt to some 
 assignable person involves the sympathy of the spec- 
 tator, and inasmuch as sympathy, according to Mr. 
 Mill, constitutes the essence of the social feeling it 
 follows that in New-utilitarianism the notion of a 
 right in no respect differs from the sentiment of 
 Justice itself. Thus the figure which it was necessary 
 to add to the notion of a right in order to complete 
 the sentiment of Justice is at best a cipher without a 
 multiplying power. 
 
 In conclusion, we can assure Mr. Mill that it is no 
 necessary part of the creed of Intuitionalism (although 
 the generalities in which its defenders too often 
 indulge justify his criticism) to hold that 'Justice is 
 wholly independent of utility, and is a standard per 
 se which the mind can recognise by simple intro- 
 spection of itself/ We no more believe this than that 
 the terms Eight, Duty, Conscience defy analysis, 
 and are invested with a sacredness which should pro- 
 hibit it. 
 
 The exposition which we have endeavoured to 
 give of utilitarianism as advocated by Mr. Mill, brief 
 though it has necessarily been, will suffice at least 
 to suggest the relation of his doctrine to past and 
 present theories ; and if, in our estimate of it, we can- 
 not admit that it possesses so consistent and thorough- 
 going a character as the parent utilitarianism of 
 Bentham, it is gratifying to find that its deficiencies 
 
Mr. Mill. 1 2 7 
 
 in respect of logical precision and inner consistency 
 are due to a deeper sensibility and a wider reach of 
 thought than were characteristic of the older doctrine, 
 and consequently give good promise of an approach to 
 that non-personal subjective sentimental eudaemonism 
 in which are to be found, we believe, the elements of 
 the reconciliation of a strife which has lasted for more 
 than two thousand years. 
 
128 Professor Bain. 
 
 PEOFESSOE BAIN'S UTILITAEIANISM. 1 
 
 AMONG other remarks which indicate the dubious 
 attitude assumed by Mr. Mill towards utilitarianism, 
 is a footnote on p. 73 of his essay, in which he 
 speaks in terms of strong laudation of Mr. Bain's 
 ethical views. A more careful consideration of these, 
 especially in their connexion with Mr. Bain's Disser- 
 tations and Notes on Paley, which are in perfect 
 harmony with more recent expressions of opinion, 
 would have shown Mr. Mill that, except in the recog- 
 nition of Honour and the Virtues as existing in some 
 
 o 
 
 artistic region of man's nature, Mr. Bain out-Bentham's 
 Bentham, and revives the very doctrines which Mr. 
 Mill has laboured to qualify and amend. Were it not, 
 indeed, for this reactionary character of Mr. Bain's 
 writings reactionary as against advanced utilitarian- 
 ism itself it might not be necessary here to exhibit 
 their tendencies. 
 
 ' To illustrate further the nature of right,' says 
 Mr. Bain, ' we would remark that obligation implies 
 punishment . Where a penalty cannot be inflicted, 
 there is no effective obligation ; and in cases where, 
 although rules have been violated, punishment is not 
 
 1 As the basis of our remarks on Mr. Bain, we have taken the Disserta- 
 tions and Notes on Paley, collating these, however, with his work on the 
 Emotions and the Will. 
 
Professor Bain. 129 
 
 considered proper, obligation is virtually denied. We 
 find, for example, that there is no disposition to 
 punish men for not being benevolent ; and, therefore, 
 we must presume that benevolence is not held to be 
 a universal and indispensable duty. . . . Punish- 
 ment means the infliction of positive pain or evil in 
 amount proportioned to the degree and the continu- 
 ance of the offence.' 1 
 
 This theory of obligation or moral law contains im- 
 plicitly Mr. Bain's theory of morality. By permitting 
 the question of obligation to override the question of 
 moral ends, and, consequently, of the standard of the 
 right, he has, in our opinion, introduced further con- 
 fusion into ethical science. This confusion he has suc- 
 ceeded in overcoming, in so far as the consistency of 
 his own thought is concerned, by giving a special and 
 arbitrary definition to the term obligation. If that 
 only is a matter of obligation which society compels a 
 man to do under pain of suffering, and which his per- 
 sonal and physical security compels him to do under a 
 similar penalty, it follows that morality proper is con- 
 fined within the sphere of the penal ; and that all 
 acts other than those which are so essential to per- 
 sonal and social security as to fall under the notice of 
 the police, lie outside the moral, the right, the obliga- 
 tory, and require to be arranged under some new name. 
 
 Ends of Action. Accordingly, when we turn to 
 the dissertation on the ends of action, we find these 
 
 1 Notes on Paley, p. 86. 
 I 
 
1 30 Professor Bain. 
 
 classified as ends of primary, secondary, and what we 
 may call tertiary 1 morality, according to the extent 
 of the obligatoriness. Primary morality includes all 
 those acts which bear so directly on personal and 
 social Security as to be subjects of legislation, written 
 or unwritten, and which are consequently of full obli- 
 gation. Secondary morality embraces such acts of 
 benevolence as exceed the legal demands of society, 
 and are of less obligation. Lastly, such acts of noble- 
 ness, self-sacrifice, purity, heroism as call forth our 
 admiration, in consequence of their being akin to the 
 beautiful and sublime in nature and art, may be in- 
 cluded under the head of tertiary, or, as it might 
 also be denominated, artistic morality. 
 
 Let us shortly look at these Moral ends in their 
 order. 
 
 The following quotations convey with sufficient 
 clearness Mr. Bain's doctrine of Primary morality : 
 
 ' Man has, under an instinct of self-preservation, 
 the care of his own being, or the maintenance of his 
 bodily existence, with the provision of all things 
 essential thereto/ . . . 'The rules and maxims of 
 bodily prudence come to be improved and refined 
 upon as intelligence is expanded, and, at the same 
 time, new motives of obedience are brought into play/ 
 . . . 'The end of prudential morality may, there- 
 fore, be assumed to be the preservation and the plea- 
 sure of the individual/ . . . ' The uniform practice 
 
 1 This term tertiary is not employed by Mr. Bain, but it is implied in his 
 classifications, and the employment of it helps to bring out his meaning. 
 
Professor Bain. 131 
 
 observed among human beings of forming associa- 
 tions among themselves, and living in mutual de- 
 pendence, puts a new face upon the necessities, and 
 therefore upon the conduct and duties of indi- 
 vidual men and women/ ... * An enlargement of 
 the circle of pleasures and pains, and of the motive 
 to action that these furnish, is the consequence of 
 man's sociability ; moreover, the mere necessities of 
 life, the means of bodily sustenance and security, are 
 better obtained by social co-operation/ . . . Thus 
 it gradually comes about that ' the [instinctive] re- 
 vulsion against personal harm is equally excited by a 
 wrong done to the society that protects the person 
 and secures its means of subsistence. A man must 
 no more sin against the order of the society that he 
 lives among, than against his daily bread and nightly 
 shelter. The duties of obedience and social rule are 
 duties of self-preservation, and have always been felt 
 as such where we human beings have been drawn 
 into social unions/ . . . 'Hence obedience to Law 
 and the social virtues being indispensable to man's 
 very existence, have the highest degree of obligation 
 and imperative force that any consideration in the 
 whole compass of being can possess/ 
 
 The end and motive of primary morality then is 
 the comfort and security of the individual agent. 
 Even those acts which he does nominally for society 
 are done in reality for himself. There are, it is true, 
 many classes of social acts which are held to be 
 imperative, which do not seem at first sight to fall 
 
1 3 2 Professor Bain . 
 
 under the head of primary morality, and which, there- 
 fore, have not the strongest daim on our obedience. 
 Such, for example, are those acts indicated by the 
 word Integrity. But, according to Mr. Bain, if we 
 look closer at the matter, we shall find that this virtue 
 is necessary to the social well-being and to the pro- 
 gress of civilisation. ' It may be proved to have its 
 roots in the highest necessities and most salient 
 benefits of human life/ Integrity, then, is to be 
 cultivated for the sake of the social security : and 
 as we have seen that the social security is to govern 
 our acts, because it is merely a disguised personal 
 security, it follows that integrity is to be practised 
 because it promotes the individual's personal security 
 and comfort. 
 
 But there are other virtues, such as Benevolence, 
 Purity, Justice, Obedience to law. What of these 1 
 They too, it seems, derive their obligatory character 
 from their bearing on the social security and comfort; 
 and ' the recognised duties and virtues of the ordinary 
 morality 7 derive their validity (in so far, we presume, 
 as they may or can be legitimately enforced) from 
 their contributing to ' the ends bodily preservation 
 and social security ; that is to say, really and ulti- 
 mately, the comfort and security of the individual 
 acting. That all the virtues, in so far as they belong 
 to the primary morality, are only an indirect means 
 of obtaining comfort and security for the individual 
 who is called upon to practise them, is an inevitable 
 consequence of Mr. Bain's reasoning. In truth, it 
 
Professor Bain. 1 33 
 
 constitutes his reasoning, the thin disguise of utility 
 and social felicity being occasionally thrown over the 
 bare skeleton of the lowest form of selfism. It is at 
 once manifest that this is an extreme form of the 
 Benthamite utilitarianism. The high standard of the 
 * Greatest Happiness on the whole/ as the ground 
 of obligation for practising social duties and social 
 virtues, and as giving to society its right to inflict 
 penalties, is lost sight of. The development is a 
 natural one ; it is the fruit of a logical mind em- 
 ployed upon the Benthamite doctrine in all its logical 
 hardness, and endeavouring to give it scientific and 
 systematic exposition. In the effort to do so, there 
 is an inevitable relapse into Hobbism. That this is 
 so, must be apparent to any one who can see that 
 the primary ground of any social duty must be either 
 calculating selfism, or sentiment, or law ; either an 
 extended and refined personal prudence, the exhibi- 
 tion and gratification of a specific characteristic of 
 rational minds, or obedience to duty. 
 
 Obligation. If we have correctly explained Mr. 
 Bain's theory of primary moral ends and the grounds 
 of obligation, we have, by implication, given expres- 
 sion to his standard or criterion of Tightness. That 
 act is right which is calculated to advance the indi- 
 vidual agent's personal security as the member of a 
 community. Mr. Bain may decline to accept this 
 inference : it is nevertheless correct. The criterion of 
 rightness is thus brought back to a personal or sub- 
 
1 3 4 Professor Bain . 
 
 jective standard, and society is deprived of all right 
 to impose primary morality, except in so far as it 
 derives it from its might. The majority, in respect 
 of power (not necessarily of numbers) originates 
 duties and virtues, and authoritatively declares them. 
 In other words, the State is the source of right ; and 
 thus we again encounter the crudest Hobbism. 
 
 Mr. Bain would probably here direct attention to the 
 fact, that under primary morality he speaks only of 
 those classes of acts which society has a right to 
 enforce by legal penalties ; and that in his secondary 
 morality the same virtues which have been treated 
 in their primary and binding character reappear as 
 qualities not ' absolutely binding/ but laudable and 
 desirable in each and all, and as being, in some sense, 
 obligatory. The answer to this is to be found in his 
 own treatment of the subject. On pages 15 and 88 of 
 his edition of Paley, it will be found that of all the 
 virtues, Benevolence (as a form of tenderness) alone 
 comes before us as having a quasi-obligation. Even 
 of it he says, ' that actions of pure benevolence [that 
 is to say, exceeding the legal or enforceable demand] 
 do not come within the scope of obligatory duty, but 
 are in a manner left open to the choice of the indi- 
 vidual.' It is true that on more than one occasion 
 he feels himself hard pushed to hold his ground, and 
 under the influence of this pressure, or, it may be, of 
 intellectual confusion, he introduces benevolence as a 
 primary duty ; as when he says (p. 6), ' The affec- 
 tions and sympathies felt by a man towards his 
 
Professor Bain. 1 3 5 
 
 fellows may be a source of disinterested regard to 
 their interests in common with his own/ Again 
 (p. 11), 'The virtue of humanity or benevolence 
 commends itself as being the offspring of one of the 
 most powerful and luxurious of our constitutional 
 impulses ; namely, the emotion of natural tenderness, 
 which enters into and sweetens all the relations of 
 mutual dependence/ Further, at a later stage of his 
 argument, when treating of the Secondary morality, 
 that is to say, of the exercise of a kind of overplus of 
 benevolence, or what we might fitly call gratuitous 
 acts of good-will, he, in despair of finding any ground 
 of real obligation for enforcing a duty so fraught with 
 good consequences, slips into the statement not ex- 
 plicitly made, but rather evaded in the treatment of 
 the Primary morality, viz., * As our primary morality 
 would have (sic) to include the cardinal virtue of 
 benevolence or humanity, we might/ etc. Notwith- 
 standing, however, these misplaced and inadvertent 
 observations, we find not only in the passages already 
 quoted, but pervading the whole argument, the propo- 
 sition that benevolence falls under primary morality, 
 that is to say, is obligatory, only in so far as it con- 
 tributes to personal security and comfort. 'Every 
 human being has a positive interest in it. We are 
 all liable to fall into dependent situations ; therefore,' 
 etc. Moreover, as a motive for acting with benevo- 
 lence, we are told that we have to lay up store not 
 only of worldly good, but, with a view to possible 
 exigencies, we ' must lay up a character that will 
 
136 Professor Bain. 
 
 sustain the pressure of evil days/ Accordingly we 
 conclude that benevolence enters into enforceable or 
 primary morality on the same terms as integrity, of 
 which it is said, * If there be any cases where a breach 
 of integrity can produce no evil consequences of any 
 kind, either relating to the bonds of society, retarding 
 the cause of truth, inducing a habit of unveracity, or 
 exciting suspicion or distrust, there would scarcely 
 exist any conceivable motive for enforcing the practice 
 of this virtue/ So of Purity, Justice, and so forth. 
 We are accordingly compelled to regard Benevolence 
 and all other virtues as being obligatory, only in so 
 far as by reaction and interaction they promote the 
 personal comfort and security of the agent. 
 
 The free exercise of benevolence, without regard to 
 the reactive benefits accruing to the agent is, however, 
 in some sense, it appears, a moral duty. The duties 
 of the primary morality, Mr. Bain says, are not f the 
 whole duty of man/ In what sense then, we would 
 ask, is the virtue of benevolence, exercised purely, and 
 without regard to reversions, a moral duty? If a 
 moral duty, it must be in some sense obligatory ; and 
 yet we are told (p. 86) that 'actions which people are 
 charged to perform, but are not punished for neglect- 
 ing, may be looked upon as having the form of obliga- 
 tion without the reality ;' and (p. 88) that ' actions of 
 pure benevolence do not come within the scope of 
 obligatory duty, but are in a manner left open to the 
 choice of the individual/ ' In a manner' left open ! 
 
Professor Bain. 137 
 
 And this is all the light that is thrown on the duties 
 of pure Benevolence, of Integrity, Purity, Justice (out- 
 side the common law), and so forth. Either these are 
 duties or they are not, either they are obligatory or 
 they are not. If the former, to what or whom are 
 they due, by what law are they enforced ? If the 
 latter, why speak of them as moral duties at all, or 
 as moralities in any sense whatsoever ? 
 
 In the midst of this confusion we turn back again 
 to the Dissertation on ends of human action and find 
 these virtues talked of as ' moral duties strictly so 
 called ' (p. 7), and as ends of human action, but ' not 
 equally binding with the primary moral ends/ and 
 again (p. 17), as 'the less imperative duties.' Our 
 confusion is thus increased : they are imperative, and 
 yet not imperative ; obligatory, and yet not obligatory. 
 
 If this theory of ends and obligations be true of the 
 secondary moralities, in so far as they are not penally 
 enforceable by society, how much more is it applicable to 
 those heroic exhibitions of virtue which belong to what 
 we have termed the tertiary morality. Devotion, self- 
 sacrifice, magnanimity, unbending integrity, heroism, 
 which are the most perfect exhibitions of morality, 
 are not so much moral as artistic, says Mr. Bain, and 
 are ' sought not so much from [their] necessity in 
 human life as from the fascination and charm which 
 they yield to the actor and beholder/ These qualities 
 of character do not come, he says, ' within the scope 
 of the obligatory/ And, in truth, since the virtues, 
 as such, are imperative, if at all, in a vague, undefined, 
 
 USI7BESITYJ 
 
138 Professor Ba in . 
 
 and undefinable sense, it would be unreasonable to 
 expect Mr. Bain to allow any obligation to attach to 
 the heroic manifestation of them. 
 
 And yet, according to the same author, the nobilities 
 and graces of character, and the virtues as such, are 
 ends. We would ask, in what sense can there be for 
 any rational intelligence a true end which is not also 
 ipso facto, so far forth, a duty an obligation \ Mr. 
 Bain seems in one passage to see this himself; for, when 
 speaking of Dignity, he says, ' Every creature possesses 
 along with its natural constitution a sense of what 
 that constitution is fit for, and what will put its 
 capacities to the best account ; and with this sense 
 there is a certain feeling of the high propriety, if not 
 obligation, so to employ itself. As our knowledge of 
 character improves, we are better able to appreciate 
 this fitness, and to feel the corresponding obligation.' 
 After all, then, there is, it seems, a sense of obligation 
 attending even the tertiary morality the morality of 
 the heroic. If so, how much more must the obliga- 
 tion impose itself on the more moderate exhibitions of 
 the same virtues from all connexion with which it has 
 been excluded ! 
 
 Until we rid our minds and argument of his over- 
 riding theory of obligation, we shall not see our way 
 clearly through the conflicting statements of Mr. Bain. 
 He ought, in the first instance, to have confined himself 
 to ends. These once determined, we may obtain some 
 light on the nature of obligation, and, consequently, 
 
Professor Bain. 1 39 
 
 of the greater or less imperativeness of certain classes 
 of acts. The virtues, in their moderate and heroic 
 form, are in some places admitted by Mr. Bain to 
 be laudable, desirable, and admirable ends of human 
 action. Not only so, they are, according to him, 
 ends which transcend the primary morality, differing 
 from it mainly in this, that they are more than 
 we can fairly ask of men very much more than 
 we can rightfully enforce. But if they are ends, it 
 seems to us that they not only ought to be sought 
 after, but because of their transcendent character 
 and their comprehension of all lower moralities, they 
 ought to be chiefly sought after. If ends, and 
 therefore duties, in what sense can it be said that 
 they are not obligatory ? The apparent self-contra- 
 diction arises from a peculiar definition of the word 
 obligatory, as being synonymous with that which can 
 or may be enforced by fines, imprisonments, and 
 corporal inflictions. Had Mr. Bain confined himself 
 in the first instance to ends, apart from the question 
 of obligations, he would have found that every true 
 end of any intelligence is a duty for that intelligence, 
 and that its highest end is its highest duty. In the 
 end itself he would have found the obligation. By 
 these means he would have been led to a definition of 
 obligation which would have shown wherein primary 
 obligation consists, and whence it is derived ; and 
 he would have found that external penalties and all 
 derivative sanctions are in truth only the secondary 
 and adventitious supports of morality. 
 
140 Professor Bain. 
 
 If Mr. Bain had with boldness and consistency 
 said, ' There is nothing in the so-called " virtues " or 
 heroisms except a kind of deification of certain words, 
 which, when analysed, reveal nothing but expedients 
 for preserving the individual and the community in 
 security and comfort, and that man has been so con- 
 stituted that he imagines that he follows after a divine 
 idea when in truth he is only looking after his own 
 security/ his scheme of ethics would at least have 
 had the merit of being scientific. But he does not do 
 so. For, under the name of tenderness, he admits 
 the existence of an innate sentiment of benevolence 
 which has itself for its end. Admitting this, he must 
 also admit those virtues to be ends in themselves 
 into which benevolence enters, such as self-sacrifice, 
 justice, etc. Nor, indeed, can we find that he does 
 not admit this in the case of all virtues which rest on 
 the sentiments. If, therefore, he will only define 
 anew the word Obligation, under the influence of a 
 consideration of all three classes of ethical ends, as 
 laid down by himself, instead of confining himself to 
 the first and lowest, he will find the true source of pri- 
 mary obligation where he will find the ends namely, 
 in the moral nature of the agent himself. Police ethics 
 will then make way for the ethics of man, and find 
 their true place in the moral code, as the lowest mani- 
 festation of those sentiments which constitute the 
 governing elements in human nature, and which cover, 
 on the one hand, the duties which man owes to man, 
 and on the other, those which the individual owes to 
 
Professor Bain. \ 4 1 
 
 himself and to God. And when he has thus found in 
 this subjective doctrine a reconciliation of his own 
 contradictory utterances as to ends and obligations, he 
 will have no difficulty in finding, in the same subjec- 
 tive sphere in which he has found ends and primary 
 obligations, a criterion of the right which assigns 
 its true significance to the quantitative morality of 
 utilitarianism, while giving its weight to a loftier 
 scheme of human duty. His ethical vision will take 
 a larger sweep, and not confine itself to those acts 
 which society has a right to control, the consideration 
 of which constitutes a fitting introduction to a treatise 
 on Jurisprudence, but only a small part of Morality. 
 
 The fundamental error of Mr. Bain and of all utili- 
 tarians is their persistent and exclusive regard to the 
 political side of human actions. Hence their objec- 
 tive treatment of morality as a thing of external ends 
 and external sanctions. They forget the individual 
 moral agent in the needs and well-being of society 
 at large, and thus fix attention on the effect of acts 
 on the common happiness (by which they mean widely 
 diffused comfort and enjoyments) to the exclusion of 
 the character of the acting. If they would but con- 
 sent to individualize their moral speculations, they 
 would discover that what moralists have concern with 
 is the right acting of the individual : that is to say, 
 energizing in accordance with the ultimate ends of 
 man as man ; and that the social end falls within the 
 larger subjective end as a part of it. The right social 
 acting, for example, is that acting which conforms to 
 
142 Professor Ba in . 
 
 the sentiments of benevolence and justice, and yields 
 them fruition ; the right social act is that act which 
 truly attains the external purpose of the sentiment. 
 
 Criterion of Rightness. Our business hitherto has 
 mainly been to allow Mr. Bain to criticise himself, and 
 to justify one of our opening sentences, in which we 
 charge him with having worse confounded the already 
 prevalent confusions of ethical polemics. We have 
 still to inquire into Mr. Bain's criterion of Tightness ; 
 for although the doctrine of a moral criterion is im- 
 plicitly contained in the doctrine of moral ends, it 
 is yet necessary to consider these questions apart. 
 We have to look for Mr. Bain's criterion in his 
 chapters on the Moral Sense, and on Obligation. 
 In the former (p. 30) he tells us that the standard 
 or criterion is an external one. This it was natural 
 to expect as a consequence from his theory of ends 
 and obligations. That act, he says, is right the 
 whole assignable effects of which on sentient crea- 
 tures is such as to promote their well-being ; and he 
 illustrates this position by the supposed case of dis- 
 criminate and indiscriminate almsgiving. In the 
 latter case, he says, we have complied with an in- 
 stinctive morality (which, so far, is not denied), while 
 in the latter we have a morality which commends 
 itself both ' to the sentiments and to the reason/ From 
 this we are surely entitled to conclude that there is 
 an inner standard of sentiment which determines the 
 class of act which we are to perform, while observa- 
 
Professor Bain. 143 
 
 tion and reason determine the true bearing and ulti- 
 mate incidence of the act. Suppose the act to be 
 productive of moral or physical harm to the bene- 
 ficiary, it is wrong ; but why ? Because, we should 
 say, it is thereby shown not to be what it affects to 
 be a benevolent act. The right thing, after all, then 
 is the conformity of the will with the inner sentiment 
 of benevolence ; the individual is right when he con- 
 forms to this, although he may defeat his moral purpose 
 by inattention to the outer expression of the inner con- 
 dition of rightness . Conformity with the sentiment 
 might be called the major premiss, of which the minor is 
 the specific act. Had Mr. Bain ignored the sentiments, 
 or denied them, or held to his treatment of them else- 
 where 1 as caprices of the individual, vagaries of popular 
 feeling, or irrational impositions of religious teachers, 
 he would not have fallen into the contradictions under 
 which his whole argument labours. He vigorously 
 asserts his utilitarian position with respect to ends, 
 criterion, and obligations ; and yet, in every page of 
 his dissertations on Paley, and frequently in his other 
 writings, he inadvertently takes possession of the doc- 
 trines of another school, and inserts them in his para- 
 graphs as if they rightfully belonged to his argument. 
 We are thus led into much painful perplexity in any 
 attempt at interpretation. The above mode of putting 
 the utilitarian external standard is an illustration of 
 what we mean. We are told that the criterion of 
 right is external, and then, before the paragraph is 
 
 1 Emotions and the Will, p. 309, etc. 
 
144 Professor Bain. 
 
 concluded, we are told that, by looking to the external 
 effects of an act, we satisfy the claims of the senti- 
 ments as well as of the reason. From which the barest 
 conclusion that can be drawn is that the sentiments 
 are somehow involved in the criterion of the right. 
 
 Nor do we find any light thrown on these contradic- 
 tions by reference to his definition of the opposing in- 
 ternal standard against which he argues. There is a 
 cold recklessness in the assertions, that by the in- 
 ternal standard of morality is meant ' the liking or 
 disliking of the individual to the action, apart 
 altogether from its consequences/ 1 and that the utili- 
 tarian doctrine ' is a substitution of a regard to con- 
 sequences for a mere unreasoning sentiment or feel- 
 ing/ 2 It is scarcely credible that Mr. Bain can have 
 given so little attention to other lines of thought than 
 his own, as to suppose that a subjective moralist 
 inevitably puts the criterion of the right on the indi- 
 vidual's ' liking/ and is utterly regardless of the con- 
 nexion between the right acting and the consequences 
 of his a6t. There is a school of moralists which main- 
 tains that the criterion is to be found in the authori- 
 tative utterances of a Moral Sense which has no 
 regard to consequences ; but this school is not truly 
 represented except by those who confine the range of 
 this sense to denominations or qualities of acts only. 
 Still less is such a mode of defining the opinions of 
 intuitionalists true of sentimentalists proper. There 
 is no quarrel between them and the utilitarians as to 
 
 1 Note* on Paky, p. 36, 2 Emotions, etc., p. 302. 
 
Professor Bain. 145 
 
 the necessity of tracing acts into their consequences, in 
 order to ascertain whether they truly conform in their 
 final effects to the sentiment from which they sprang. 
 That which we have elsewhere expounded as subjec- 
 tive eudsemonism, points out the true source of the 
 utilitarian error, namely, the non-distinction between 
 the right energizing and the right act which is the 
 effect of that energizing. Let this distinction be pre- 
 served, and the question of the nature of the moral 
 act will so far be settled. The quarrel will then be 
 confined to psychological ground, and will be a ques- 
 tion as to the nature of these major premisses or 
 sentiments, and the extent to which they are merely 
 self-created means to ends, and in themselves essen- 
 tially illusory. We shall have to determine whether 
 they are thought-crystallizations of those generalized 
 precepts which tend to the social security, or innate 
 characteristics of all rational intelligences, and there- 
 fore ends in themselves ends of reason, although 
 necessarily having, each according to its nature, a 
 more or less extended history outside itself, which it is 
 our duty to trace and to consider. 
 
 In what sense, we would ask, can a thinker 
 maintain the purely external or objective standard 
 to the exclusion of the internal or subjective, 
 who admits into his argument such statements as 
 the following : ' There is [in man] a strong feel- 
 ing of the Tightness of mutually dependent beings 
 acting kindly to each other. 71 So powerful is this 
 
 1 Notes on Paley, p. 38. 
 K 
 
146 Professor Bain. 
 
 feeling or sense, that it ' tends to govern the sense of 
 right/ That is to say, the sense of rightness tends to 
 govern the sense of right ! Then he speaks of the 
 ' sense of the beautiful and becoming, as entering into 
 our judgments of right and wrong/ which means, I 
 presume, that the test of the rightness of certain 
 things is their beautifulness and becomingness. Then 
 gratitude, he tells us, is a duty ; and why ? There 
 are personal and social ' interests' which strengthen its 
 obligation ; but, over and above this, we are informed 
 1 that it is called for by an imperious sentiment of moral 
 fitness and propriety :' from which it appears that 
 there is a sentiment of moral fitness and propriety 
 which is in some instances a touchstone, test, or stan- 
 dard of the right in conduct. Again, he says, 'The 
 sense of what is for the good of the individual, with 
 reference to the whole compass of being, easily chimes 
 in with the moral instincts.' Again, he speaks of the 
 ' elevating and ennobling impulses of our being/ and 
 so forth, until we are utterly at a loss to know on 
 what ground we stand. 
 
 Nor are our difficulties removed by finding senti- 
 ments talked of as ' certain things founded in taste, 
 liking, aversion, or fancy/ and thus confounded with 
 idiosyncracies and caprices on the one hand, and con- 
 ventional religious peculiarities on the other. 1 The 
 cup of our surprise is full w T hen we are told (after all 
 that has been said) that ethical inquiry has nothing to 
 do with ' the specific impulses and feelings of human 
 
 1 Emotions and the Will, pp. 306-309. 
 
Professor Bain. 147 
 
 nature that come in to support the maxims of mora- 
 lity/ 1 In other words, the sentimental and emotional 
 side of rational intelligences has nothing to do with 
 the right and obligatory energizing of these intelli- 
 gences ! Such are the consequences of divorcing 
 psychology or the study of mind from the study of 
 the right life of the mind ; and of putting forward the 
 duties, which the majority of any community may 
 enforce by penalties, in the name of ethical science 
 properly so called. 
 
 To fortify his position against the intuitionalists, 
 Mr. Bain looks into history, and finds revealed ' in the 
 process of the enactment of moral rules' the true 
 source of moral precepts and practices, and,, by conse- 
 quence, the real standard to which intuitionalists daily 
 refer when they fancy they are appealing to an inner 
 discriminating Sense and authoritative law. 2 A Solon, 
 a Lycurgus, a Mahomet, a George Fox, or the State 
 represented by some one individual clothed with 
 legislative authority, prescribe certain rules of conduct 
 which their followers or subjects accept and practice, 
 not as in themselves right, but through blind faith in 
 the utterer. But, we ask, by what means do these men 
 themselves reach their rules ? and the answer must be, 
 by reflection on the constitution and destiny of man. 
 Kules and maxims belong to the secondary or deriva- 
 tive morality, and rest for their validity on their 
 harmony with the universal nature of man. The 
 framer of them believes that he is constructing pre- 
 
 1 Notes on Paley, p. 92. 2 Emotions, etc., pp. 311, 312. 
 
148 Professor Bain. 
 
 cepts which do so harmonize and which will best secure 
 for man the highest good possible for him here arid 
 hereafter. Followers of the more thoughtful kind 
 accept these maxims, because they themselves discern 
 this harmony and fitness, while many, doubtless, are 
 led by ulterior ends or sinister motives, and not a few 
 by the felt need of some law or other as a controlling 
 power in communities. To stop short at the secondary 
 or preceptive morality is to stop at the threshold of 
 the inquiry. It is this very secondary morality as 
 uttered by the legislator or prophet, or by a more 
 powerful than either, King Nomos, which is itself the 
 subject of inquiry and of controversy. When a 
 schoolmaster prescribes certain bounds beyond which 
 his boys are not to wander, is the precept founded on 
 the arbitrary will of the master \ 
 
 We are told, in illustration of the revolutions 
 possible in morality, of the change of feeling in 
 the United States on the subject of slavery. An 
 abhorrence of slaveholding now exists which two 
 centuries ago was not known. And were the anti- 
 slavery party now to succeed in making the main- 
 tenance of their opinions a ' term of communion/ 
 the abhorrence would be developed into a moral 
 sentiment/ There is here a confounding of senti- 
 ments with maxims professedly based on sentiment, 
 and an implied attempt to convey that all ' moral 
 sentiments ' are artificial notions of the human mind 
 which may be made to order. That man would be 
 a fool who did not admit that the bearing of the 
 
Professor Bain. 149 
 
 sentiments on our social relations, on custom, laws, 
 and on our own personal conduct, is capable from age 
 to age of larger interpretation and of greater refine- 
 ment and of ever-increasing complexity. The consti- 
 tution of human nature, and the fact of the existence 
 of the sentiments as motives and ends, and therefore 
 obligations, remains, notwithstanding, unchanged. We 
 deny then that it is ' mere trifling to fill our imagina- 
 tion with [what Mr. Bain calls] an unseen, unpro- 
 ducible standard of morality ; ' nor do we think that 
 Solon, Mahomet, and other leaders of men were, 
 taken severally or conjointly, the authority that 'origi- 
 nally prescribed almost any moral precept now recog- 
 nised as binding.' It might surely have occurred to 
 Mr. Bain that to imagine that intuitionalism, main- 
 tained in one form or another as it has been by the 
 weightiest intellects of Europe, was convertible with 
 a kind of bastard- Hobbism, was either ' trifling' with 
 his subject, or utterly misconceiving it. 
 
 Moral Sense. Like many others, Mr. Bain, in his re- 
 marks on the Moral Sense or Conscience terms which 
 he regards as equivalent unwittingly confounds the 
 Derivative Conscience with the primary discriminating 
 instinct of lightness. The former is that aggregation 
 of precepts, rules, sentiments, and feelings of obliga- 
 tion which every man trained in a civilized community 
 carries about with him, and from out of which he draws 
 from day to day and hour to hour the moral weapons 
 which the occasions of life require. The latter is that 
 
150 Professor Bain . 
 
 power or process whereby a man originally discerns 
 the right act from the wrong. The Derivative Con- 
 science all men are at one about : they differ as to the 
 mode of its formation, and the primitive elements 
 which enter into the composite structure. 
 
 It is true that those who maintain the existence in 
 man of a distinct Faculty or Sense which, in every 
 particular case, unreasoningly and unerringly selects 
 from out of a number of possible individual acts that 
 act which is alone right, identify the primary and the 
 derivative conscience. But what thinker (save War- 
 burton and, in a distant degree, Butler) can be said to 
 ' do this ? Conscience in this sense is the conscience 
 of the vulgar, and of necessity the conscience of 
 oratory ; but it finds no place in the creed of (at 
 least) any recent philosophy. And yet it is against 
 the Moral Sense so conceived that Mr. Bain and his 
 school generally direct their attacks, and it is over 
 this that they celebrate an easy victory. Our busi- 
 ness is with a certain power, capacity, instinct, or 
 sense in man which discriminates as an act of 
 judgment of course, for this form all conscious 
 movements of a rational being must take certain 
 governing motives of conduct from one another and 
 forces the affirmation of rightness regarding the one 
 and wrongness regarding the other. But we shall not 
 here enter further into the general question, but confine 
 ourselves, as we have clone hitherto, to Mr. Bain's own 
 reasonings, and to the exhibition of their inherent 
 contradictoriness. 
 
Professor Bain. 1 5 1 
 
 We might of course expect that Mr. Bain, having 
 adopted the external standard of Tightness, would deny 
 an innate faculty of moral discrimination ; for, if the 
 standard be external, and, as he says, ' exposed to the 
 observation and understanding of all men/ the facul- 
 ties of observation, comparison, and inference are 
 adequate to the function of moral discrimination and 
 moral direction. To look for any fresh power or sense 
 would be to run counter to one of the first principles 
 of philosophical inquiry. But after he has taken up 
 this position, we are surprised to find him defining the 
 'Moral Sense' 1 and the 'Conscience' as the feeling 
 or faculty of approval and disapproval. Is then the 
 affirmation of approval a different process psycholo- 
 gically from the affirmation that two and two make 
 four ; and is the affirmation of disapproval a different 
 psychological process from the affirmation that six 
 times six are not thirty-seven ? If some hidden 
 element enters into the one judgment which does not 
 enter into the other, what is that element ? 
 
 For our part, we should have expected a more 
 thorough and consistent treatment of these important 
 terms. Mr. Bain ought, feeling how pertinaciously 
 they cling even to his own thought, to have felt also 
 how they secretly vitiated his conclusions, and to 
 have got rid of them once and for all in some such 
 way as this : The Moral Sense or Conscience is 
 vulgarly held to be a feeling of approbation and 
 disapprobation, and by these words a moral judg- 
 
 1 Emotions and the mil, pp. 286 and 297. 
 
152 Professor Bain . 
 
 ment is usually distinguished from an intellectual 
 judgment. But if we admit this separation of terms 
 in speaking of a specific class of phenomena, we 
 ipso facto admit the stirring up of something in us 
 on the presentation of certain acts, which is more 
 than the intellectual affirmation of the fitness of cer- 
 tain movements to attain certain external results 
 something emotional, and pleasurable, and law- giving : 
 we therefore discard the terms as illusory, and as 
 wrongfully usurping a place which rightfully belongs 
 to the words * fitness and unfitness/ 
 
 Having abjured a Moral Sense, our author then sets 
 about showing how the characteristics of the so-called 
 Moral Sense or Conscience may be accounted for 
 without having recourse to a separate faculty or feel- 
 ing. 1 But here again his argument, in so far as it is 
 good, is good only against the vulgar theory of a Con- 
 science as the arbitrary discriminator and dictator of 
 the right and the wrong in each particular act. We 
 are entitled, however, to assume that he is endeavouring 
 to make good his point against intuitionalism generally. 
 This he is far from doing : his reasoning is powerless 
 against the doctrine which, we believe, really underlies 
 the vulgar one, and which we have endeavoured else- 
 where to disentomb ; that, namely, which maintains 
 the existence of certain innate feelings called senti- 
 ments, by which we measure acts, and which are ends 
 in themselves, though not fulfilling themselves in 
 themselves. In opposition to this subjective senti- 
 mental theory all utilitarian attempts to construct a 
 
 1 Notes on Paley, p. 37. 
 
Professor Bain. 1 5 3 
 
 non-sentimental theory of discrimination, dictation, 
 and approbation inevitably break down. Mr. Bain 
 himself tells us, in his attempt to construct the con- 
 science, that 'there is a strong fading of the Tight- 
 ness of mutually dependent beings acting kindly to 
 each other' . . . that ' a Conscience without a heart 
 would not come up to the Conscience either of 
 the moralist or of the multitude' . . . and again, 
 that 'the same power that enables a man to arrive 
 at truth gives the perception of truth, and with that 
 perception, all the approbation and satisfaction that the 
 adherence to truth can inspire ;' from which it would 
 appear that there is an intellectual approbation of 
 truthfulness or integrity capable of being stirred into 
 pleasurable emotion irrespectively of consequences. 
 Nor is this all ; for, according to our author himself, 
 ' we must include the feeling of what is beautiful 
 and noble among the conspiring ingredients of the 
 moral sense of the generality of mankind ;' from 
 which it follows, that there is a feeling or sentiment 
 of the beautiful in conduct, which can be stirred 
 into pleasurable emotion on the perception by the 
 intellect of certain acts, and which, therefore, is an 
 end in itself and for itself. There is also, we are 
 told, ' an imperious sentiment of moral fitness and 
 propriety altogether apart (in the case of gratitude, 
 and therefore in other cases) from the consideration 
 of justice, or of the evil consequences to society, of 
 discouraging the authors of benefits ;' and so on. But 
 if these sentiments are ends, they are also obliga- 
 tions. It accordingly becomes as impossible to extract 
 
T 54 Professor Bain. 
 
 consistency out of such heterogeneous statements 
 regarding a Moral Sense, as we have found it to be to 
 harmonize Mr. Bain's expositions of ends, criterion, 
 and obligation. 
 
 So much for the Conscience or Moral Sense as a 
 discriminator and approver. The mixing up of the 
 two functions is not our fault. There is a third 
 function, that of an authority, a law, a binding force. 
 On pages 286 and 297 of the Emotions and the Will, 
 Mr. Bain defines Conscience (which he identifies with 
 the Moral Sense) as the feeling of approbation and 
 reprobation. On page 313, when he again has to 
 treat of the same subject, he, without notice of the 
 separate moral functions which enter into the com- 
 plex notion, treats of Conscience as meaning a senti- 
 ment of authority or duty. In this confounding of 
 the functions of that which is popularly and inde- 
 finitely called ' Conscience/ Mr. Bain has so many 
 companions, both of the utilitarian and the intuitive 
 school, that we do no more than make this passing 
 allusion to it as a common source of error. It of 
 course follows, from the fact that all obligation pro- 
 ceeds from without, that Conscience, as an obligatory 
 sentiment, is simply an artificial image in the mind of 
 external authority ' an imitation within ourselves 
 of the government without us/ No objection can be 
 taken to this description of the genesis of the human 
 Conscience which has not been already taken to the 
 theory of obligation itself. If there be no inner 
 obligatory forces penal and recompensing, there is 
 then no such thing as an inner Conscience save as an 
 
Professor Bain. 155 
 
 illusion of the imagination or the intellect. And 
 there is nothing more to be said about it. 
 
 The history which Mr. Bain gives of the growth 
 of the sense of obligation or duty in the human 
 mind, from childhood upwards, is interesting and 
 valuable, in so far as external forces are concerned. 
 We do not think, however, that it is strictly ac- 
 curate, except where the early training of children 
 is based on deterrent influences. Not terror, as 
 Mr. Bain maintains, but force as such, is the first 
 great lesson of childhood force resisting the spon- 
 taneous movements of the body and the will of the 
 child, but not necessarily associated with pain and 
 fear. To this succeeds the anticipation of force as a 
 preventive of certain acts, but not as a deterrent in 
 the sense of stirring up fear. We cannot therefore 
 admit, as the result of our observation, that ' the infant 
 conscience is nothing but the linking of terror with 
 forbidden actions/ The deterrent influences, doubt- 
 less, come in to support the others sooner or later, 
 and continue throughout life increasing rather than 
 decreasing in power as the knowledge of life extends. 
 
 We notice that Mr. Bain gives to the approbation 
 of others as such, apart from the consequences of it, 
 an importance and an external power of an obligatory 
 character which is denied to it elsewhere, but which, 
 if fully accorded, might prepare the way for a new 
 casting of the chapters on ends and obligations, 
 which would lift his moral theory altogether out of 
 the utilitarian rut. 
 
156 Professor Bain. 
 
 We might point to further inconsistencies of state- 
 ment arising from unconscious appropriations of non- 
 utilitarian doctrines, to which Mr. Bain is driven by 
 a necessity similar to that which we have already seen 
 operating in other parts of his argument. This, how- 
 ever, would involve repetition and might be superfluous. 
 But after having followed him through the windings 
 and inconsistencies of his theoretical exposition, we 
 cannot read his concluding remarks without respect for 
 his loyalty to party at least, and to the thesis he had to 
 maintain, qualified though that respect be by the per- 
 tinacity of his misconceptions and the negligence of 
 his logic. He concludes by telling us now, as at first, 
 that 'positive beneficence/ 'good offices/ 'positive 
 good deeds/ ' self- sacrifice/ are 'not objects of moral 
 approbation;' that they are objects of 'esteem and 
 reward/ but 'transcend the region of morality pro- 
 per!' If they are not moral, not appro vable, not right, 
 not obligatory, what are they, and what new vocabu- 
 lary shall we teach our children ? After all that has 
 been said, does it come to this, that Mr. Bain has only 
 got this familiar lesson of Jurisprudence to teach us, 
 that duties which the State enforces by penalties 
 have a larger quantitative sanction than those which 
 are the fruit of a free and spontaneous development 
 of our rational nature in harmony with its lofty aims 
 and great destiny ? 
 
 EDINBURGH^' T. CONSTABLE, 
 PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
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