THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BUTLER'S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE.
IN Butler's ethical speculation there are to be found the various lines of thought with which ethical controversy has always been engaged, and from the emphasis of anyone of which an ethical theory receives its definitive character. We see running through his treatment strains of intuitionism, rationalism, and hedonism, both egoistic and universalistic; and in the expositions of his system, sometimes one and sometimes another of these elements is emphasized as especially descriptive of his doctrine. In a general way, Butler has stood in the history of the development of ethical thought as the founder of modern intuitionism. When his system has been regarded in this light, the criticism has usually followed that he has given us only a psychology, and not an explanation of the moral life, that morality for him is without content. It is further asserted, however, that when he does assign a content to conscience it is the content of self-love, and virtue in the last analysis becomes synonymous with individual happiness. On the other hand, his position has been more or less closely identified with the speculations of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, and it is said that "in Butler the sentimental school really reaches its climax."[1] If such is the case, then the content of virtue is, not prudence, but benevolence. Further, Butler's rationalism is supposed to lie in the office and position which he has attributed to conscience as reflection, and in the supremacy of such a moral faculty in the hierarchy of human nature—a view which is compared with Plato's enthronement of reason as lawful sovereign in the soul of man, while desire should obey, and the passions be held in leash, "as the dog is by the shepherd." Again it is alleged that Butler holds to a duality of regulative principles—conscience, the content of which is the content of benevolence, and self-love, which has prudence for its content. Finally, and perhaps most commonly, however,
- ↑ Selby-Bigge, British Moralists, vol. I, p. xliv.
