though they are the effect of long experience and exercise as much so as language." Conscientious conduct, like the due proportion to be established between self-love and benevolence, is different in different cases; it depends upon and "can be judged of only from our nature and condition in this world." The virtue required of different individuals is not the same, because the nature of the agent is a varying factor. Yet each fulfils his whole duty, and accomplishes the highest realization attainable for him, when he develops so far as in his power lies that moral capacity with which he is by nature endowed, and lives up to such insight as he possesses.
These admissions, however, do not militate against the practical or theoretical supremacy of conscience. Butler has implicit faith that the development of our capacity for moral perception and action will keep pace with the growth and the extension of the range of its applicability. Hence we may trust without hesitation to its guidance. The fact of development, and the influence of experience, do not destroy the intrinsic character or unchanging essence of morality, which lies deeper than any given form of moral practice, and is "prior to the consideration of human laws." The various changing expressions of the moral ideal do not signify that the essential nature of morality is mutable, but rather that the moral ideal has different applications in different circumstances and relations. The right of conscience to approve or condemn is vindicated by the fact that it is the faculty which perceives with ever-growing adequacy the truth of morality. And as the moral nature is the highest and distinctive part of man, that which makes human nature a constitutional whole, the faculty which, as a matter of fact, does pass moral judgments, is, both de facto and de jure, supreme, and lays upon us the most intimate obligation. Consequently, the whole of virtue is that conduct which conscience dictates as worthy, suitable, natural to man.
As conscience must learn its lessons from experience, so it must depend upon the formation of the fixed habit of virtuous action to secure a settled course of behavior in accordance with its behests.[1] And herein lies the secret of our true happiness.
- ↑ The fifth chapter of the first part of the Analogy is ample evidence that Butler did not greatly underestimate the rôle of experience and the function of habit.
