Observations on Man (6th edition)/Part I/Chapter IV/Section VI
Section VI
THE PLEASURES AND PAINS OF THE MORAL SENSE.
There are certain tempers of mind, with the actions flowing from them, as of piety, humility, resignation, gratitude, &c. towards God; of benevolence, charity, generosity, compassion, humility, gratitude, &c. towards men; of temperance, patience, contentment, &c. in respect of a person’s own private enjoyments or sufferings; which when he believes himself to be possessed of, and reflects upon, a pleasing consciousness and self-approbation rise up in his mind, exclusively of any direct explicit consideration of advantage likely to accrue to himself, from his possession of these good qualities. In like manner the view of them in others raises up a disinterested love and esteem for these others. And the opposite qualities of impiety, profaneness, uncharitableness, resentment, cruelty, envy, ingratitude, intemperance, lewdness, selfishness, &c. are attended with the condemnation both of ourselves and others. This is, in general, the state of the case; but there are many particular differences, according to the particular education, temper, profession, sex, &c. of each person.
Or, which is the same thing, the secondary ideas belonging to virtue and vice, duty and sin, innocence and guilt, merit and demerit, right and wrong, moral good and moral evil, just and unjust, fit and unfit, obligation and prohibition, &c. in one man, bear a great resemblance to those belonging to the same words in another, or to the corresponding words, if they have different languages; and yet do not exactly coincide, but differ more or less, according to the difference in education, temper, &c.
Now both this general resemblance, and these particular differences, in our ideas, and consequent approbation or disapprobation, seem to admit of an analysis and explanation from the following particulars.
First, Children are, for the most part, instructed in the difference and opposition between virtue and vice, duty and sin, &c.; and have some general descriptions of the virtues and vices inculcated upon them. They are told, that the first are good, pleasant, beautiful, noble, fit, worthy of praise and reward, &c.; the last odious, painful, shameful, worthy of punishment, &c.; so that the pleasing and displeasing associations previously annexed to these words in their minds, are, by means of that confidence which they place in their superiors, transferred upon the virtues and vices respectively. And the mutual intercourses of life have the same effect in a less degree, with respect to adults, and those children who receive little or no instruction from their parents or superiors. Virtue is in general approved, and set off by all the encomiums, and honourable appellations, that any other thing admits of, and vice loaded with censures and reproaches of all kinds, in all good conversation and books. And this happens oftener than the contrary, even in bad ones; so that as far as men are influenced in their judgments by those of others, the balance is, upon the whole, on the side of virtue.
Secondly, There are many immediate good consequences, which attend upon virtue, as many ill ones do upon vice, and that during our whole progress through life. Sensuality and intemperance subject men to diseases and pain, to shame, deformity, filthiness, terrors, and anxieties; whereas temperance is attended with ease of body, freedom of spirits, the capacity of being pleased with the objects of pleasure, the good opinion of others, the perfection of the senses, and of the faculties, bodily and mental, long life, plenty, &c. Anger, malice, envy, bring upon us the returns of anger, malice, envy, from others, with injuries, reproaches, fears, and perpetual disquietude; and, in like manner, good-will, generosity, compassion, are rewarded with returns of the same, with the pleasures of sociality and friendship, with good offices, and with the highest encomiums. And when a person becomes properly qualified, by the previous love of his neighbour, to love God, to hope and trust in him, and to worship him in any measure as he ought to do, this affords the sincerest joy and comfort; as, on the contrary, the neglect of God, or practical atheism, the murmuring against the course of providence, sceptical unsettledness, and fool-hardy impiety, are evidently attended with great anxieties, gloominess, and distraction, as long as there are any traces of morality or religion left upon men’s minds. Now these pleasures and pains, by often recurring in various combinations, and by being variously transferred upon each other, from the great affinity between the several virtues, and their rewards, with each other; also between the several vices, and their punishments, with each other; will at last beget in us a general, mixed, pleasing idea and consciousness, when we reflect upon our own virtuous affections or actions; a sense of guilt, and an anxiety, when we reflect on the contrary; and also raise in us the love and esteem of virtue, and the hatred of vice in others.
Thirdly, The many benefits which we receive immediately from, or which have some evident, though distant, connexion with the piety, benevolence, and temperance of others; also the contrary mischiefs from their vices; lead us first to the love and hatred of the persons themselves by association, as explained under the head of sympathy, and then by farther associations to the love and hatred of the virtues and vices, considered abstractedly, and without any regard to our own interest; and that whether we view them in ourselves or others. As our love and esteem for virtue in others is much increased by the pleasing consciousness, which our own practice of it affords to ourselves, so the pleasure of this consciousness is much increased by our love of virtue in others.
Fourthly, The great suitableness of all the virtues to each other, and to the beauty, order, and perfection of the world, animate and inanimate, impresses a very lovely character upon virtue; and the contrary self-contradiction, deformity, and mischievous tendency of vice, render it odious, and matter of abhorrence to all persons that reflect upon these things; and beget a language of this kind, which is borrowed, in great measure, from the pleasures and pains of imagination, and applied with a peculiar force and fitness to this subject from its great importance.
Fifthly, The hopes and fears which arise from the consideration of a future state, are themselves pleasures and pains of a high nature. When, therefore, a sufficient foundation has been laid by a practical belief of religion, natural and revealed, by the frequent view of, and meditation upon, death, by the loss of departed friends, by bodily pains, by worldly disappointments and afflictions, for forming strong associations of the pleasures of these hopes with duty, and the pains of these fears with sin, the reiterated impressions of those associations will at last make duty itself a pleasure, and convert sin into a pain, giving a lustre and deformity respectively to all their appellations; and that without any express recollection of the hopes and fears of another world, just as in other cases of association.
Sixthly, All meditations upon God, who is the inexhaustible fountain, and infinite abyss, of all perfection, both natural and moral; also all the kinds of prayer, i.e. all the ways of expressing our love, hope, trust, resignation, gratitude, reverence, fear, desire, &c. towards him; transfer, by association, all the perfection, greatness, and gloriousness of his natural attributes upon his moral ones, i.e. upon moral rectitude. We shall by this means learn to be merciful, holy, and perfect, because God is so; and to love mercy, holiness, and perfection, wherever we see them.
And thus we may perceive, that all the pleasures and pains of sensation, imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, and theopathy, as far as they are consistent with one another, with the frame of our natures, and with the course of the world, beget in us a moral sense, and lead us to the love and approbation of virtue, and to the fear, hatred, and abhorrence of vice. This moral sense therefore carries its own authority with it, inasmuch as it is the sum total of all the rest, and the ultimate result from them; and employs the force and authority of the whole nature of man against any particular part of it, that rebels against the determinations and commands of the conscience or moral judgment.
It appears also, that the moral sense carries us perpetually to the pure love of God, as our highest and ultimate perfection, our end, centre, and only resting-place, to which yet we can never attain.
When the moral sense is advanced to considerable perfection, a person may be made to love and hate, merely because he ought; i.e. the pleasures of moral beauty and rectitude, and the pains of moral deformity and unfitness, may be transferred, and made to coalesce, almost instantaneously.
Scrupulosity may be considered as a degeneration of the moral sense, resembling that by which the fear of God passes into superstition; for it arises, like this, from a consciousness of guilt, explicit or implicit, from bodily indisposition, and from an erroneous method of reasoning. It has also a most intimate connexion with superstition (just as moral rectitude has with the true love and fear of God:) and, like superstition, it is, in many cases, observed to work its own cure by rectifying what is amiss; and so by degrees removing both the explicit and implicit consciousness of guilt. It seems also, that in this imperfect state men seldom arrive at any great degree of correctness in their actions without some previous scrupulosity, by which they may be led to estimate the nature and consequences of affections and actions with care, impartiality, and exactness.
The moral sense or judgment here spoken of is sometimes considered as an instinct, sometimes as determinations of the mind, grounded on the eternal reasons and relations of things. Those who maintain either of these opinions may, perhaps, explain them so as to be consistent with the foregoing analysis of the moral sense from association. But if by instinct be meant a disposition communicated to the brain, and in consequence of this, to the mind, or to the mind alone, so as to be quite independent of association; and by a moral instinct, such a disposition producing in us moral judgments concerning affections and actions; it will be necessary, in order to support the opinion of a moral instinct, to produce instances, where moral judgments arise in us, independently of prior associations determining thereto.
In like manner, if by founding the morality of actions, and our judgment concerning this morality, on the eternal reasons and relations of things, be meant, that the reasons drawn from the relations of things, by which the morality or immorality of certain actions is commonly proved, and which, with the relations, are called eternal, from their appearing the same, or nearly the same, to the mind at all times, would determine the mind to form the corresponding moral judgment independently of prior associations, this ought also to be proved by the allegation of proper instances. To me it appears, that the instances are, as far as we can judge of them, of an opposite nature, and favour the deduction of all our moral judgments, approbations, and disapprobations, from association alone. However, some associations are formed so early, repeated so often, rivetted so strong, and have so close a connexion with the common nature of man, and the events of life which happen to all, as, in a popular way of speaking, to claim the appellation of original and natural dispositions; and to appear like instincts when compared with dispositions evidently factitious; also like axioms, and intuitive propositions, eternally true according to the usual phrase, when compared with moral reasonings of a compound kind. But I have endeavoured to shew in these papers, that all reasoning, as well as affection, is the mere result of association.