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GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO VOL. II.

1. Hume’s doctrine of morals parallel to his doctrine of nature.

2. Its relation to Locke: Locke’s account of freedom, will, and desire.

3. Two questions: Does man always act from the strongest motive? and, What constitutes his motive? The latter the important question. Distinction between desires that are, and those that are not, determined by the conception of self.

4. Effect of this conception on the objects of human desire.

5. Objects so constituted Locke should consistently exclude: But he finds room for them by treating every desire for an object, of which the attainment gives pleasure, as a desire for pleasure.

6. Confusion covered by calling ‘happiness’ the general object of desire.

7. ‘Greatest sum of pleasure’ and ‘Pleasure in general’ unmeaning expressions.

8. In what sense of happiness is it true that it ‘is really just as it appears?’ In what sense that it is every one’s object?

9. No real object of human desire can ever be just as it appears.

10. Can Locke consistently allow the distinction between true happiness and false? Or responsibility?

11. Objections to the Utilitarian answer to these questions.

12. According to Locke present pleasures may be compared with future, and desire suspended till comparison has been made.

13. What is meant by ‘present’ and ‘future’ pleasure? By the supposed comparison Locke ought only to have meant the competition of pleasures equally present in imagination:

14…. and this could give no ground for responsibility. In order to do so, it must be understood as implying determination by conception of self.

15. Locke finds moral freedom in necessity of pursuing happiness.

16. If an action is moved by desire for an object, Locke asks no questions about origin of the object. But what is to be said of actions, which we only do because we ought?

17. Their object is pleasure, but pleasure given not by nature but by law.

18. Conformity to law not the moral good, but a means to it.

19. Hume has to derive from ‘impressions’ the objects which Locke took for granted.

20. Questions which he found at issue, a. Is virtue interested? b. What is conscience?

21. Hobbes’ answer to first question.

22. Counter-doctrine of Shaftesbury. Vice is selfishness; but no clear account of selfishness.

23. Confusion in his notions of self-good and public good; Is all living for pleasure, or only too much of it, selfish?

24. What have Butler and Hutcheson to say about it? Chiefly that affections terminate upon their objects; but this does not exclude the view that all desire is for pleasure.

25. Of moral goodness Butler’s account circular. Hutcheson’s inconsistent with his doctrine that reason gives no end.

26. Source of the moral judgment: received notion of reason incompatible with true view. Shaftesbury’s doctrine of rational affection; spoilt by doctrine of ‘moral sense’.

27. Consequences of the latter.

28. Is an act done for ‘virtue’s sake’ done for pleasure of moral sense?

29. Hume excludes every object of desire but pleasure.

30. His account of ‘direct passions’: all desire is for pleasure.

31. Yet he admits ‘passions’ which produce pleasure, but proceed not from it.

32. Desire for objects, as he understands it, excluded by his theory of impressions and ideas.

33. Pride determined by reference to self.

34. This means that it takes its character from that which is not a possible ‘impression’.

35. Hume’s attempt to represent idea of self as derived from impression.

36. Another device is to suggest a physiological account of pride.

37. Fallacy of this: it does not tell us what pride is to the subject of it.

38. Account of love involves the same difficulties; and a further one as to nature of sympathy.

39. Hume’s account of sympathy.

40. It implies a self-consciousness not reducible to impressions.

41. Ambiguity in his account of benevolence: it is a desire and therefore has pleasure for its object. What pleasure?

42. Pleasure of sympathy with the pleasure of another.

43. All ‘passions’ equally interested or disinterested. Confusion arises from use of ‘passion’ alike for desire and emotion. Of this Hume avails himself in his account of active pity.

44. Explanation of apparent conflict between reason and passion.

45. A ‘reasonable’ desire means one that excites little emotion. Enumeration of possible motives.

46. If pleasure sole motive, what is the distinction of self-love? Its opposition to disinterested desires, as commonly understood, disappears. It is desire for pleasure in general.

47. How Hume gives meaning to this otherwise unmeaning definition. ‘Interest,’ like other motives described, implies determination by reason.

48. Thus Hume, having degraded morality for the sake of consistency, after all is not consistent.

49. If all good is pleasure, what is moral good? Ambiguity in Locke’s view.

50. Development of it by Clarke, which breaks down for want of true view of reason.

51. With Hume, moral good is pleasure excited in a particular way, viz.; in the spectator of the ‘good’ act and by the view of its tendency to produce pleasure.

53. Moral sense is thus sympathy with pleasure qualified by consideration of general tendencies.

54. In order to account for the facts it has to become sympathy with unfelt feelings.

55. Can the distinction between the ‘moral’ and ‘natural’ be maintained by Hume? What is ‘artificial virtue’?

56. No ground for such distinction in relation between motive and act.

57. Motive to artificial virtues.

58. How artificial virtues become moral.

59. Interest and sympathy account for all obligations civil and moral.

60. What is meant by an action which ought to be done.

61. Sense of morality no motive: when it seems so the motive is really pride.

62. Distinction between virtuous and vicious motive does not exist for person moved.

63. ‘Consciousness of sin’ disappears.

64. Only respectability remains: and even this not consistently accounted for.