if thereby they deprived themselves of all possibility of receiving
any advantage from their adherence.”
Thus, on the whole, the impressive earnestness with which Clarke enforces the doctrine of rational morality only rendered more manifest the difficulty of establishing ethics on an independent philosophical basis; so long at least as the psychological egoism of Hobbes is not definitely assailed and overthrown. Until this is done, the utmost demonstration of the abstract reasonableness of social duty only leaves us with an irreconcilable antagonism between the view of abstract reason and the self-love which is allowed to be the root of man’s appetitive nature. Let us grant that there is as much intellectual absurdity in acting unjustly as in denying that two and two make four; still, if a man has to choose between absurdity and unhappiness, he will naturally prefer the former; and Clarke, as we have already seen, is not really prepared to maintain that such preference is irrational.[1]
It remains to try another psychological basis for ethical construction; instead of presenting the principle of social duty as abstract reason, liable to conflict to any extent with natural self-love, we may try to exhibit the naturalness of man’s social affections, and demonstrate Shaftesbury. a normal harmony between these and his self-regarding impulses. This is the line of thought which Shaftesbury (1671–1713) may be said to have initiated. This theory had already been advanced by Cumberland and others, but Shaftesbury was the first to make it the cardinal point in his system; no one had yet definitely transferred the centre of ethical interest from the Reason, conceived as apprehending either abstract moral distinctions or laws of divine legislation, for the emotional impulses that prompt to social duty; no one had undertaken to distinguish clearly, by analysis of experience, the disinterested and self-regarding elements of our appetitive nature, or to prove inductively their perfect harmony. In his Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit he begins by attacking the egoism of Hobbes, which, as we have seen, was not necessarily excluded by the doctrine of rational intuitions of duty. This interpretation, he says, would be true only if we considered man as a wholly unrelated individual. Such a being we might doubtless call “good,” if his impulses were adapted to the attainment of his own felicity. But man we must and do consider in relation to a larger system of which he forms a part, and so we call him “good” only when his impulses and dispositions are so balanced as to tend towards the good of this whole. And again we do not attribute goodness to him merely because his outward acts have beneficial results. When we speak of a man as good, we mean that his dispositions or affections are such as tend of themselves to promote the good or happiness of human society. Hobbes’s moral man, who, if let loose from governmental constraint, would straightway spread ruin among his fellows, is not what we commonly agree to call good. Moral goodness, then, in a “sensible creature” implies primarily disinterested affections, whose direct object is the good of others; but Shaftesbury does not mean (as he has been misunderstood to mean) that only such benevolent social impulses are good, and that these are always good. On the contrary, he is careful to point out, first, that immoderate social affections defeat themselves, miss their proper end, and are therefore bad; secondly, that as an individual’s good is part of the good of the whole, “self-affections” existing in a duly limited degree are morally good. Goodness, in short, consists in due combination, in just proportion, of both sorts of “affections,” tendency to promote general good being taken as the criterion of the right degrees and proportions. This being established, the main aim of Shaftesbury’s argument is to prove that the same balance of private and social affections, which tends naturally to public good, is also conducive to the happiness of the individual in whom it exists. Taking the different impulses in detail, he first shows how the individual’s happiness is promoted by developing his social affections, mental pleasures being superior to bodily, and the pleasures of benevolence the richest of all. In discussing this he distinguishes, with well-applied subtlety, between the pleasurableness of the benevolent emotions themselves, the sympathetic enjoyment of the happiness of others, and the pleasure arising from a consciousness of their love and esteem. He then exhibits the unhappiness that results from any excess of the self-regarding impulses, bodily appetite, desire of wealth, emulation, resentment, even love of life itself; and ends by dwelling on the intrinsic painfulness of all malevolence.[2]
One more special impulse remains to be noticed. We have seen that goodness of character consists in a certain harmony of self-regarding and social affections. But virtue, in Shaftesbury’s view, is something more; it implies a recognition of moral goodness and immediate preference of it for its own sake. This immediate pleasure that we take in goodness (and displeasure in its opposite) is due to a susceptibility which he calls the “reflex” or “moral” sense, and compares with our susceptibility to beauty and deformity in external things; it furnishes both an additional direct impulse to good conduct, and an additional gratification to be taken into account in the reckoning which proves the coincidence of virtue and happiness. This doctrine of the moral sense is sometimes represented as Shaftesbury’s cardinal tenet; but though characteristic and important, it is not really necessary to his main argument; it is the crown rather than the keystone of his ethical structure.
The appearance of Shaftesbury’s Characteristics (1713) marks a turning-point in the history of English ethical thought. With the generation of moralists that followed, the consideration of abstract rational principles falls into the background, and its place is taken by introspective study of the human mind, observation of the actual play of its various impulses and sentiments. This empirical psychology had not indeed been neglected by previous writers. More, among others, had imitated Descartes in a discussion of the passions, and Locke’s essay had given a still stronger impulse in the same direction; still, Shaftesbury is the first moralist who distinctly takes psychological experience as the basis of ethics. His suggestions were developed by Hutcheson into one of the most elaborate systems of moral philosophy which we possess; through Hutcheson, if not directly, they influenced Hume’s speculations, and are thus connected with later utilitarianism. Moreover, the substance of Shaftesbury’s main argument was adopted by Butler, though it could not pass the scrutiny of that powerful and cautious intellect without receiving important modifications and additions. On the other hand, the ethical optimism of Shaftesbury, rather broadly impressive than exactly reasoned, and connected as it was with a natural theology that implied the Christian scheme to be superfluous, challenged attack equally from orthodox Mandeville. divines and from cynical freethinkers. Of these latter Mandeville, the author of The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefits (1723), was a conspicuous if not a typical specimen. He can hardly be called a “moralist”; and though it is impossible to deny him a considerable share of philosophic penetration, his anti-moral paradoxes have not even apparent coherence. He is convinced that virtue (where it is more than a mere pretence) is purely artificial; but not quite certain whether it is a useless trammel of appetites and passions that are advantageous to society, or a device creditable to the politicians who introduced it by playing upon the “pride and vanity” of the “silly creature man.” The view, however, to which he gave audacious expression, that moral regulation is something alien to the natural man, and imposed on him from without, seems to have been very current in the polite society of his time, as we learn both from Berkeley’s Alciphron and from Butler’s more famous sermons.
The view of “human nature” against which Butler preached was not exactly Mandeville’s, nor was it properly to be called
- ↑ It should be observed that, while Clarke is sincerely anxious to prove that most principles are binding independently of Divine appointment, he is no less concerned to show that morality requires the practical support of revealed religion.
- ↑ Three classes of impulses are thus distinguished by Shaftesbury:—(1) “Natural Affections,” (2) “Self-affections,” and (3) “Unnatural Affections.” Their characteristics are further considered in the History of Ethics, p. 186 seq.
