and recognizes—in his later treatise at least—no “obligation”
to virtue, except that of the agent’s interest or happiness. He
attempts, however, to show, in a summary way, that all the
duties which his moral theory recommends are also “the true
interest of the individual,”—taking into account the importance
to his happiness of “peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct.”
But even if we consider the moral consciousness merely as a particular kind of pleasurable emotion, there is an obvious question suggested by Hume’s theory, to which he gives no adequate answer. If the essence of “moral taste” is sympathy with the pleasure of others, why is not this specific feeling excited by other things beside virtue that tend to cause such pleasure? On this point Hume contents himself with the vague remark that “there are a numerous set of passions and sentiments, of which thinking rational beings are by the original constitution of nature the only proper objects.” The truth is, that Hume’s notion of moral approbation was very loose, as is sufficiently shown by the list of “useful and agreeable” qualities which he considers worthy of approbation.[1] It is therefore hardly surprising that his theory should leave the specific quality of the moral sentiments a fact still needing to be explained. An original and ingenious solution of this problem was offered by his contemporary Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Adam Smith. Without denying the actuality or importance of that sympathetic pleasure in the perceived or inferred effects of virtues and vices he yet holds that the essential part of common moral sentiment is constituted rather by a more direct sympathy with the impulses that prompt to action or expression. The spontaneous play of this sympathy he treats as an original and inexplicable fact of human nature, but he considers that its action is powerfully sustained by the pleasure that each man finds in the accord of his feelings with another’s. By means of this primary element, compounded in various ways, Adam Smith explains all the phenomena of the moral consciousness. He takes first the semi-moral notion of “propriety” or “decorum,” and endeavours to show inductively that our application of this notion to the social behaviour of another is determined by our degree of sympathy with the feeling expressed in such behaviour. Thus the prescriptions of good taste in the expression of feeling may be summed up in the principle, “reduce or raise the expression to that with which spectators will sympathize.” When the effort to restrain feeling is exhibited in a degree which surprises as well as pleases, it excites admiration as a virtue or excellence; such excellences Adam Smith quaintly calls the “awful and respectable,” contrasting them with the “amiable virtues” which consist in the opposite effort to sympathize, when exhibited in a remarkable degree. From the sentiments of propriety and admiration we proceed to the sense of merit and demerit. Here a more complex phenomenon presents itself for analysis; we have to distinguish in the sense of merit—(1) a direct sympathy with the sentiments of the agent, and (2) an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of those who receive the benefit of his actions. In the case of demerit there is a direct antipathy to the feelings of the misdoer, but the chief sentiment excited is sympathy with those injured by the misdeed. The object of this sympathetic resentment, impelling us to punish, is what we call injustice; and thus the remarkable stringency of the obligation to act justly is explained, since the recognition of any action as unjust involves the admission that it may be forcibly obstructed or punished. Moral judgments, then, are expressions of the complex normal sympathy of an impartial spectator with the active impulses that prompt to and result from actions. In the case of our own conduct what we call conscience is really sympathy with the feelings of an imaginary impartial spectator.
Adam Smith gives authority to his moral system by saying that “moral principles are justly to be regarded as the laws of the Deity”; but this he never proves. So Hume insists emphatically on the “reality of moral obligation”; but is found to mean no more by this than the real existence of the likes and dislikes that human beings feel for each other’s qualities. The fact is that amid the analysis of feelings aroused by the sentimentalism of Shaftesbury’s school, the fundamental questions “What is right?” and “Why?” had been allowed to drop into the background, and the consequent danger to morality was manifest. The binding force of moral rules becomes evanescent if we admit, with Hutcheson, that the “sense” of them may properly vary from man to man as the palate does; and it seems only another way of putting Hume’s doctrine, that reason is not concerned with the ends of action, to say that the mere existence of a moral sentiment is in itself no reason for obeying it. A reaction, in one form or another, against the tendency to dissolve ethics into psychology was inevitable; since mankind generally could not be so far absorbed by the interest of psychological hypothesis as to forget their need of establishing practical principles. It was obvious, too, that this reaction might take place in either of the two lines of thought, which, having been peacefully allied in Clarke and Cumberland, had become distinctly opposed to each other in Butler and Hutcheson. It might either fall back on the moral principles commonly accepted, and, affirming their objective validity, endeavour to exhibit them as a coherent and complete set of ultimate ethical truths; or it might take the utility or conduciveness to pleasure, to which Hume had referred for the origin of most sentiments, as an ultimate end and standard by which these sentiments might be judged and corrected. The former is the line adopted with substantial agreement by Price, Reid, Stewart and other members of the still existing Intuitional school; the latter method, with considerably more divergence of view and treatment, was employed independently and almost simultaneously by Paley and Bentham in both ethics and politics, and is at the present time widely maintained under the name of Utilitarianism.
Price’s Review of the Chief Questions and Difficulties of Morals was published in 1757, two years before Adam Smith’s treatise. In regarding moral ideas as derived from the “intuition of truth or immediate discernment of the nature of things by the understanding,” Price revives the general view of Price. Cudworth and Clarke; but with several specific differences. Firstly, his conception of “right” and “wrong” as “single ideas” incapable of definition or analysis—the notions “right,” “fit,” “ought,” “duty,” “obligation,” being coincident or identical—at least avoids the confusions into which Clarke and Wollaston had been led by pressing the analogy between ethical and physical truth. Secondly, the emotional element of the moral consciousness, on which attention had been concentrated by Shaftesbury and his followers, though distinctly recognized as accompanying the intellectual intuition, is carefully subordinated to it. While right and wrong, in Price’s view, are “real objective qualities” of actions, moral “beauty and deformity” are subjective ideas; representing feelings which are partly the necessary effects of the perceptions of right and wrong in rational beings as such, partly due to an “implanted sense” or varying emotional susceptibility. Thus, both reason and sense of instinct co-operate in the impulse to virtuous conduct, though the rational element is primary and paramount. Price further follows Butler in distinguishing the perception of merit and demerit in agents as another accompaniment of the perception of right and wrong in actions; the former being, however, only a peculiar species of the latter, since, to perceive merit in any one is to perceive that it is right to reward him. It is to be observed that both Price and Reid are careful to state that the merit of the agent depends entirely on the intention or “formal rightness” of his act; a man is not blameworthy for unintended evil, though he may of course be blamed for any wilful neglect (cf. Arist., Eth. Nic., iii. 1), which has caused him to be ignorant of his real duty. When we turn to the subject matter of virtue, we find that Price, in comparison with More or Clarke, is decidedly
- ↑ In earlier editions of the Inquiry Hume expressly included all approved qualities under the general notion of “virtue.” In later editions he avoided this strain on usage by substituting or adding “merit” in several passages—allowing that some of the laudable qualities which he mentions would be more commonly called “talents,” but still maintaining that “there is little distinction made in our internal estimation” of “virtues” and “talents.”
