laxer in accepting and stating his ethical first principles; chiefly
owing to the new antithesis to the view of Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson by which his controversial position is complicated.
What Price is specially concerned to show is the existence of
ultimate principles beside the principle of universal benevolence.
Not that he repudiates the obligation either of rational benevolence
or self-love; on the contrary, he takes more pains than
Butler to demonstrate the reasonableness of either principle.
“There is not anything,” he says, “of which we have more
undeniably an intuitive perception, than that it is ‘right to
pursue and promote happiness,’ whether for ourselves or for
others.” Finally, Price, writing after the demonstration by
Shaftesbury and Butler of the actuality of disinterested
impulses in human nature, is bolder and clearer than Cudworth
or Clarke in insisting that right actions are to be chosen because
they are right by virtuous agents as such, even going so far
as to lay down that an act loses its moral worth in proportion
as it is done from natural inclination.
On this latter point Reid, in his Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788), states a conclusion more in harmony with common sense, only maintaining that “no act can be morally good in which regard for what is right has not some influence.” This is partly due to the fact that Reid. Reid builds more distinctly than Price on the foundation laid by Butler; especially in his acceptance of that duality of governing principles which we have noticed as a cardinal point in the latter’s doctrine. Reid considers “regard for one’s good on the whole” (Butler’s self-love) and “sense of duty” (Butler’s conscience) as two essentially distinct and co-ordinate rational principles, though naturally often comprehended under the one term, Reason. The rationality of the former principle he takes pains to explain and establish; in opposition to Hume’s doctrine that it is no part of the function of reason to determine the ends which we ought to pursue, or the preference due to one end over another. He urges that the notion of “good[1] on the whole” is one which only a reasoning being can form, involving as it does abstraction from the objects of all particular desires, and comparison of past and future with present feelings; and maintains that it is a contradiction to suppose a rational being to have the notion of its Good on the Whole without a desire for it, and that such a desire must naturally regulate all particular appetites and passions. It cannot reasonably be subordinated even to the moral faculty; in fact, a man who doubts the coincidence of the two—which on religious grounds we must believe to be complete in a morally governed world—is reduced to the “miserable dilemma whether it is better to be a fool or a knave.” As regards the moral faculty itself, Reid’s statement coincides in the main with Price’s; it is both intellectual and active, not merely perceiving the “rightness” or “moral obligation” of actions (which Reid conceives as a simple unanalysable relation between act and agent), but also impelling the will to the performance of what is seen to be right. Both thinkers hold that this perception of right and wrong in actions is accompanied by a perception of merit and demerit in agents, and also by a specific emotion; but whereas Price conceives this emotion chiefly as pleasure or pain, analogous to that produced in the mind by physical beauty or deformity, Reid regards it chiefly as benevolent affection, esteem and sympathy (or their opposites), for the virtuous (or vicious) agent. This “pleasurable good-will,” when the moral judgment relates to a man’s own actions, becomes “the testimony of a good conscience—the purest and most valuable of all human enjoyments.” Reid is careful to observe that this moral faculty is not “innate” except in germ; it stands in need of “education, training, exercise (for which society is indispensable), and habit,” in order to the attainment of moral truth. He does not with Price object to its being called the “moral sense,” provided we understand by this a source not merely of feelings or notions, but of “ultimate truths.” Here he omits to notice the important question whether the premises of moral reasoning are universal or individual judgments; as to which the use of the term “sense” seems rather to suggest the second alternative. Indeed, he seems himself quite undecided on this question; since, though he generally represents ethical method as deductive, he also speaks of the “original judgment that this action is right and that wrong.”
The truth is that the construction of a scientific method of ethics is a matter of little practical moment to Reid. Thus, though he offers a list of first principles, by deduction from which these common opinions may be confirmed, he does not present it with any claim to completeness. Besides maxims relating to virtue in general,—such as (1) that there is a right and wrong in conduct, but (2) only in voluntary conduct, and that we ought (3) to take pains to learn our duty, and (4) fortify ourselves against temptations to deviate from it—Reid states five fundamental axioms. The first of these is merely the principle of rational self-love, “that we ought to prefer a greater to a lesser good, though more distinct, and a less evil to a greater,”—the mention of which seems rather inconsistent with Reid’s distinct separation of the “moral faculty” from “self-love.” The third is merely the general rule of benevolence stated in the somewhat vague Stoical formula, that “no one is born for himself only.” The fourth, again, is the merely formal principle that “right and wrong must be the same to all in all circumstances,” which belongs equally to all systems of objective morality; while the fifth prescribes the religious duty of “veneration or submission to God.” Thus, the only principle which ever appears to offer definite guidance as to social duty is the second, “that so far as the intention of nature appears in the constitution of man, we ought to act according to that intention,” the vagueness[2] of which is obvious. (For Reid’s views on moral freedom see A. Bain, Mental Science, pp. 422, seq.)
A similar incompleteness in the statement of moral principles is found if we turn to Reid’s disciple, Dugald Stewart, whose Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828) contains the general view of Butler and Reid, Dugald Stewart. and to some extent that of Price,—expounded with more fulness and precision, but without important original additions or modifications. Stewart lays stress on the obligation of justice as distinct from benevolence; but his definition of justice represents it as essentially impartiality,—a virtue which (as was just now said of Reid’s fourth principle) must equally find a place in the utilitarian or any other system that lays down universally applicable rules of morality. Afterwards, however, Stewart distinguishes “integrity or honesty” as a branch of justice concerned with the rights of other men, which form the subject of “natural jurisprudence.” In this department he lays down the moral axiom “that the labourer is entitled to the fruit of his own labour” as the principle on which complete rights of property are founded; maintaining that occupancy alone would only confer a transient right of possession during use. The only other principles which he discusses are veracity and fidelity to promises, gratitude being treated as a natural instinct prompting to a particular kind of just actions.
It will be seen that neither Reid nor Stewart offers more than a very meagre and tentative contribution to that ethical science by which, as they maintain, the received rules of morality may be rationally deduced from self-evident first principles. A more ambitious attempt in the same direction Whewell. was made by Whewell in his Elements of Morality (1846). Whewell’s general moral view differs from that of his Scottish predecessors chiefly in a point where we may trace the influence of Kant—viz. in his rejection of self-love as an independent rational and governing principle, and his consequent refusal to admit happiness, apart from duty, as a reasonable end for
- ↑ It is to be observed that whereas Price and Stewart (after Butler) identify the object of self-love with happiness or pleasure, Reid conceives this “good” more vaguely as including perfection and happiness; though he sometimes uses “good” and happiness as convertible terms, and seems practically to have the latter in view in all that he says of self-love.
- ↑ E.g. Reid proposes to apply this principle in favour of monogamy, arguing from the proportion of males and females born; without explaining why, if the intention of nature hence inferred excludes occasional polygamy, it does not also exclude occasional celibacy.
