the moral sense. Calm self-love Hutcheson regards as morally
indifferent; though he enters into a careful analysis of the
elements of happiness,[1] in order to show that a true regard for
private interest always coincides with the moral sense and with
benevolence. While thus maintaining Shaftesbury’s “harmony”
between public and private good, Hutcheson is still more careful
to establish the strict disinterestedness of benevolent affections.
Shaftesbury had conclusively shown that these were not in the
vulgar sense selfish; but the very stress which he lays on the
pleasure inseparable from their exercise suggests a subtle egoistic
theory which he does not expressly exclude, since it may be said
that this “intrinsic reward” constitutes the real motive of the
benevolent man. To this Hutcheson replies that no doubt the
exquisite delight of the emotion of love is a motive to sustain
and develop it; but this pleasure cannot be directly obtained,
any more than other pleasures, by merely desiring it; it can be
sought only by the indirect method of cultivating and indulging
the disinterested desire for others’ good, which is thus obviously
distinct from the desire for the pleasure of benevolence. He
points to the fact that the imminence of death often intensifies
instead of diminishing a man’s desire for the welfare of those he
loves, as a crucial experiment proving the disinterestedness of
love; adding, as confirmatory evidence, that the sympathy and
admiration commonly felt for self-sacrifice depends on the belief
that it is something different from refined self-seeking.
It remains to consider how, from the doctrine that affection is the proper object of approbation, we are to deduce moral rules or “natural laws” prescribing or prohibiting outward acts. It is obvious that all actions conducive to the general good will deserve our highest approbation if done from disinterested benevolence; but how if they are not so done? In answering this question, Hutcheson avails himself of the scholastic distinction between “material” and “formal” goodness. “An action,” he says, “is materially good when in fact it tends to the interest of the system, so far as we can judge of its tendency, or to the good of some part consistent with that of the system, whatever were the affections of the agent. An action is formally good when it flowed from good affection in a just proportion.” On the pivot of this distinction Hutcheson turns round from the point of view of Shaftesbury to that of later utilitarianism. As regards “material” goodness of actions, he adopts explicitly and unreservedly the formula afterwards taken as fundamental by Bentham; holding that “that action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, and the worst which in a like manner occasions misery.” Accordingly his treatment of external rights and duties, though decidedly inferior in methodical clearness and precision, does not differ in principle from that of Paley or Bentham, except that he lays greater stress on the immediate conduciveness of actions to the happiness of individuals, and more often refers in a merely supplementary or restrictive way to their tendencies in respect of general happiness. It may be noticed, too, that he still accepts the “social compact” as the natural mode of constituting government, and regards the obligations of subjects to civil obedience as normally dependent on a tacit contract; though he is careful to state that consent is not absolutely necessary to the just establishment of beneficent government, nor the source of irrevocable obligation to a pernicious one.
An important step further in political utilitarianism was taken by Hume in his Treatise on Human Nature (1739). Hume concedes that a compact is the natural means of peacefully instituting a new government, and may therefore be properly regarded as the ground of allegiance to it at theHume. outset; but he urges that, when once it is firmly established the duty of obeying it rests on precisely the same combination of private and general interests as the duty of keeping promises; it is therefore absurd to base the former on the latter. Justice, veracity, fidelity to compacts and to governments, are all co-ordinate; they are all “artificial” virtues, due to civilization, and not belonging to man in his “ruder and more natural” condition; our approbation of all alike is founded on our perception of their useful consequences. It is this last position that constitutes the fundamental difference between Hutcheson’s ethical doctrine and Hume’s.[2] The former, while accepting utility as the criterion of “material goodness,” had adhered to Shaftesbury’s view that dispositions, not results of action, were the proper object of moral approval; at the same time, while giving to benevolence the first place in his account of personal merit, he had shrunk from the paradox of treating it as the sole virtue, and had added a rather undefined and unexplained train of qualities,—veracity, fortitude, activity, industry, sagacity,—immediately approved in various degrees by the “moral sense” or the “sense of dignity.” This naturally suggested to a mind like Hume’s, anxious to apply the experimental method to psychology, the problem of reducing these different elements of personal merit—or rather our approval of them—to some common principle. The old theory that referred this approval entirely to self-love, is, he holds, easy to disprove by “crucial experiments” on the play of our moral sentiments; rejecting this, he finds the required explanation in the sympathetic pleasure that attends our perception of the conduciveness of virtue to the interests of human beings other than ourselves. He endeavours to establish this inductively by a survey of the qualities, commonly praised as virtues, which he finds to be always either useful or immediately agreeable, either (1) to the virtuous agent himself or (2) to others. In class (2) he includes, besides the Benevolence of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, the useful virtues, Justice, Veracity and Fidelity to compacts; as well as such immediately agreeable qualities as politeness, wit, modesty and even cleanliness. The most original part of his discussion, however, is concerned with qualities immediately useful to their possessor. The most cynical man of the world, he says, with whatever “sullen incredulity” he may repudiate virtue as a hollow pretence, cannot really refuse his approbation to “discretion, caution, enterprise, industry, frugality, economy, good sense, prudence, discernment”; nor again, to “temperance, sobriety, patience, perseverance, considerateness, secrecy, order, insinuation, address, presence of mind, quickness of conception, facility of expression.” It is evident that the merit of these qualities in our eyes is chiefly due to our perception of their tendency to serve the person possessed of them; so that the cynic in praising them is really exhibiting the unselfish sympathy of which he doubts the existence. Hume admits the difficulty that arises, especially in the case of the “artificial” virtues, such as justice, &c., from the undeniable fact that we praise them and blame their opposites without consciously reflecting on useful or pernicious consequences; but considers that this may be explained as an effect of “education and acquired habits.”[3]
So far the moral faculty has been considered as contemplative rather than active; and this, indeed, is the point of view from which Hume mainly regards it. If we ask what actual motive we have for virtuous conduct, Hume’s answer is not quite clear. On the one hand, he speaks of moral approbation as derived from “humanity and benevolence,” while expressly recognizing, after Butler, that there is a strictly disinterested element in our benevolent impulses (as also in hunger, thirst, love of fame and other passions). On the other hand, he does not seem to think that moral sentiment or “taste” can “become a motive to action,” except as it “gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery.” It is difficult to make these views quite consistent; but at any rate Hume emphatically maintains that “reason is no motive to action,” except so far as it “directs the impulse received from appetite or inclination”;
- ↑ It is worth noticing that Hutcheson’s express definition of the object of self-love includes “perfection” as well as “happiness”; but in the working out of his system he considers private good exclusively as happiness or pleasure.
- ↑ Hume’s ethical view was finally stated in his Inquiry into the Principles of Morals (1751), which is at once more popular and more purely utilitarian than his earlier work.
- ↑ Hume remarks that in some cases, by “association of ideas,” the rule by which we praise and blame is extended beyond the principle of utility from which it arises; but he allows much less scope to this explanation in his second treatise than in his first.
