Psychological hedonism possesses the merit of offering a simple and uniform theory of mental action. It may admit conflicting accounts of the kinds of action and sufferance which actually give men pleasure and pain,—a point on which, for example, Hobbes and J. S. Mill differ widely. But it has one general formula for the relation of feeling to action, which has been precise and clear enough to attract many psychologists. The ethical consequences of the theory have, indeed, turned out—if the argument of the preceding chapters is valid—to be neither so obvious nor so satisfactory as its adherents have commonly supposed. But it must nevertheless be admitted that, if psychology shows pleasure to be, as a matter of fact, the constant end of action, it will be useless—even if it is not impossible—for ethics to prescribe any other end.

The opponents of ethical hedonism have thus uniformly insisted that the theory which makes pleasure the end and motive of all conscious activity is imperfect; and this psychological question has been the battle-field of many of the controversies, at any rate, of English ethics. Psychological hedonism has not, however, been confronted by the English moralists with an opposed theory of equal simplicity, nor can the controversy be said to have led to a thorough analysis of action. The psychological investigation has, in most cases, been carried no farther than the ethical interests at stake seemed to require; and the predominance of these interests has perhaps prevented the inquiry from being carried out with complete freedom from preconception on either side.

A uniform theory under which our various particular desires might be brought may, indeed, be said to have been suggested by Butler. He meets the hedonistic proposition that all desire is for personal pleasure, by the doctrine that no particular desire has pleasure as its end, since all pleasure presupposes a previous desire in the satisfaction of which it consists.[69] This theory, which may have been derived from Plato,[70] and was afterwards used by Schopenhauer to prove the negative nature of pleasure and consequent worthlessness of life, is, however, a generalisation which cannot be made to include the whole facts to be taken account of.[71] Many pleasures occur independently of any precedent desire. And what Butler had to show—and was really concerned to show—was that desire was not exclusively directed to objects thus independently found to be pleasurable: the contradictory, that is to say, and not the contrary, of psychological hedonism.

For this purpose Butler pointed to the whole class of affections which, although they may also tend to private interest, have an immediate reference to the good of others; and, in addition to these, he contended for an original principle of benevolence towards others in human nature, as well as of self-love or care for one's own interests and happiness. This latter, he held, so far from being the sole principle of action, implied the existence of a number of particular passions and affections, directed immediately to external objects—the satisfaction of these desires giving pleasure, though pleasure was not the end they aimed at. Voluntary action is thus not brought under any common rubric; for, at the same time that the calm principle of self-love is directed to the agent's greatest pleasure, the object of hunger, for example, is said to be not pleasure but food, that of benevolence not personal pleasure but the good of others.

The attempt to give unity to the non-hedonistic view of desire has come from a different quarter. Uninfluenced by the exigencies of ethical controversy, which formed the entire motive of Butler's investigation, Herbart and his school have worked out a theory of desire, which has many points of comparison with that of Butler. However much they may differ from the English moralist—of whose existence they are mostly ignorant—they are at one with him in rejecting the maxim of psychological hedonism, nihil appetimus nisi sub specie boni; and their differences from him are largely due to their having gone further in their analysis of the facts, and endeavoured to bring them under a general principle.

Butler's view of the object of desire is distinguished from the Herbartian chiefly in two respects. In the first place, he identifies that object with the external or real thing, whereas Herbart is careful to point out that it is a presentation or idea. In the second place, while Butler is content to postulate an original tendency of our nature towards certain objects, Herbart attempts to get behind this tendency, and explain the phenomena of striving from the interaction of presentations. Over and above the ordinary hypothesis of natural realism, Butler's theory implies a sort of pre-established harmony between our active tendencies and things outside the mind, in virtue of which some of these things do, and some do not, attract our desires. "from the tendency of ideas to self-realisation." Herbart, on the other hand, attempts nothing less than a complete genetic account of mental phenomena, explaining the facts of presentation, desire, and feeling through "the persistence of presentation in consciousness and their rise into clearer consciousness."[72] The phenomena of desire and feeling are both accounted for by this mechanism of impelling and inhibiting forces.[73]

It would be beyond the scope of this Essay to examine the above view of the active side of mental phenomena. For present purposes it is enough to draw attention to the fact that the common deduction of the phenomena of desire and will from the feelings of pleasure and pain is not the only "scientific" theory of human action, and that it is rejected on its merits by writers who have no hankering after what the psychological hedonist would call the mystical element of free-will. It is of interest to note, too, that Professor Bain, in whose works the traditions of psychological hedonism find their most careful expression, has modified the doctrine so as to allow of desire of pleasure and avoidance of pain explaining less than had been formerly required of them. "This tendency recognised in the doctrine of fixed ideas" Outside the circle of hedonistically-determined motives, he recognises the influence of the presentation or idea as a self-realising element in the individual consciousness, apart from its pleasurable or painful characteristics.[74] Those "fixed ideas," as Mr Bain calls them, tend both to persist in the mind, and to project themselves into action, independently of pleasure and pain—or at least with a force which is out of proportion to the pleasure they bring. As has been already seen, it is by means of this doctrine that he explains "the great fact of our nature denominated sympathy, fellow-feeling, pity, compassion, disinterestedness."[75] To the same category belongs "much of the ambition and the aspirations of human beings.... A certain notion—say of power, wealth, grandeur—has fixed itself in our mind and keeps a persistent hold there." It is asserted, indeed, that the action of such fixed ideas "perverts the regular operation of the will which would lead us to renounce whatever is hopeless or not worth the cost." And, certainly, their admission among mental phenomena seems to imply the superposition of a new theory of action upon the old theory of psychological hedonism. There is no disguising the importance of the modification thus introduced. The name "fixed idea" is misleading if it be taken to imply that persistency and tendency to action are properties belonging to a certain class of ideas only. Mr Bain's doctrine is founded on the hypothesis of the identity of the nervous centres which function in representation and in sensation, and is therefore valid of all representations or ideas. The characteristics of persistency, and of tendency to action, are therefore normal characteristics of presentations, though they may belong in an unusual degree to some ideas from the relation these hold to the dominant cluster of ideas in the individual consciousness. And if we thus attribute to all ideas without exception the tendency to self-realisation, and recognise—as we must—the relation of mutual assistance or inhibition which ideas bear to one another in virtue of their being "presented" to the same subject, we have granted the material out of which, in Herbart's skilful "Mechanik des Geistes," the phenomena of feeling and desire are woven.

The view of individual human nature, which holds that all its desires are not directed to personal pleasure, thus claims consideration. With its less restricted theory of action, this doctrine may seem to offer a larger means of determining the appropriate end of human conduct. In particular, the suggestion naturally occurs that the ethical end will, on this theory, be something else than pleasure.[76] But there is, nevertheless, no contradiction in holding—as Mr Sidgwick does—that although other objects than pleasure are actually desired, there is nothing else which can be held to be ultimately desirable, or the tendency to which can be said to have moral worth.

The ethical barrenness of psychological hedonism has been seen to result from its narrow and inflexible view of human nature. But theories such as those now to be considered have, in an ethical regard, to overcome a difficulty of another kind in the variety of impulses which they admit upon the stage. The "objects" to which these impulses or desires relate have as yet received no further characterisation than that they are objects of desire. And the difficulty of finding a principle by which some order of precedence or value amongst them may be determined is just, in other words, the difficulty of obtaining a moral standard.

The question does not ordinarily arise in the above form, because the moral standard is commonly taken for granted, and the various impulses, affections, and dispositions are made to derive their ethical rank from their relation to that standard. But this method is obviously inappropriate when the standard is still to be ascertained, its determination being the object of inquiry. And it may seem that the constitution of man contains in itself a means of distinguishing the moral value of its various elements, or of the actions to which they lead, and thus furnishing a "so as to determine a standard for action." moral standard or end for conduct. This purpose seems to have been to some extent, though not quite clearly, kept in view by the writers who, in last century, contended against the selfish theory which had been so crudely enunciated by Hobbes. They attempted to show that selfishness was not the only, nor even the most prominent, principle of action; and, from the system of diverse principles which they found implanted in human nature, they endeavoured to work out a theory of conduct.

Especially amongst the later English moralists—Adam Smith, for instance—the question of the end or standard came almost to drop out of sight in the midst of the controversy regarding the nature of the "moral sense" or "moral faculty"—the way, that is, in which we become aware of the difference between right and wrong. But in Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson—the writers who formulated this doctrine of the moral sense—the attempt is made to connect a theory of the criterion of morality with the source of our knowledge of it. "but along with a utilitarian criterion," Shaftesbury and Hutcheson both looked upon social welfare or the general happiness as the end of moral conduct, and the criterion in accordance with which moral character is ascribed to actions; at the same time that their main contention was for the immediateness of the "sense" by which we perceive these moral qualities. And they sought to establish the connection of the two doctrines by means of the benevolent feelings—which they held to be original and independent of private interest—and their immediate approval by the reflex or moral sense of the individual man. Similar ideas appear in Butler, at the same time that he tended to make conscience or the moral sense the standard of morality, as well as the source of our knowledge of it. They, as well as he, however, found it necessary to come back from the social or political to the individual point of view. Even if their conception of "the good" was not evolved from the nature of the individual man, their philosophical standpoint required them to leave broader ground, and show it to be the individual's natural goal. "and with egoistic arguments." And in doing this, their constant tendency is to revert to egoistic arguments—demonstrating the complete harmony of virtue and interest, or attempting to prove to the individual that his own happiness consists in the exercise of the social affections. Thus Shaftesbury tries to show, by an empirical collection of results, that to have the "natural" (or social) affections too weak, or the private affections too strong, is a source of misery,[77] as well as the chief source of vice; and that, largely owing to the pleasure of virtuous action, it is "to the private interest and good of every one to work to the general good."[78] Hutcheson, again, devotes a large portion of his most mature work to allay the suspicion "that in following the impulse of our kind affections and the moral faculty we are counteracting our interests, and abandoning what may be of more consequence to our happiness than either this self-approbation or the applauses of others;"[79] while Butler, referring to virtuous conduct, says, in a well-known passage, that "when we sit down in a cool hour we can neither justify to ourselves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it."[80] Opposed as the whole school were to the selfish theory of human action, they never spoke of any sacrifice of private happiness as a thing to be looked for, or in any way taken into account, in conduct which is the result of calm deliberation. It is difficult, therefore, to avoid the judgment passed upon them by Schleiermacher, that "the English school of Shaftesbury, with all their talk about virtue, are really given up to pleasure."[81]

At the same time, their writings constantly suggest a theory of morals which is neither obliged to adopt off-hand a utilitarian criterion of virtue, nor forced to fall back upon the egoistic sanctions of personal pleasure and pain. Their psychological theory points to an ethical doctrine in which pleasure is neither the sole end of action, nor its sole motive. They do not, indeed, make quite clear the transition from the psychological to the ethical point of view; and critics are still fond of confronting Butler with the objection he anticipated—Why ought I to obey my conscience? The apparent petitio principii of Butler's answer, Because it is the law of your nature, is due to the way in which the teleological standpoint is introduced. The purpose of which (according to Butler) man is the vehicle or realising organism is spoken of as a law externally imposed, and deriving its authority, not from its own nature, but from the nature of its origin.

There would seem to be one way only to surmount the difficulty arising from the variety of impulses of which the nature of man is made up, and that is by consistently following out the teleological point of view. But what, the question is, is the final or comprehensive end to which human nature points amidst this diversity of objects of striving? The doctrine of the "moral sense" attempts to answer the question. "Different views of the nature of the moral sense." Now this moral sense may either be regarded as not itself a separate faculty, but simply an expression for the harmony of human tendencies; or it may be looked upon as a separate and superior capacity, which, again, may either be interpreted in terms of sense, or of the understanding—the former interpretation leading to its identification with pleasure, the latter to its being conceived as law.

These different methods were attempted by the English moralists—the first, however, to a less extent than the others. But it inspired much of Shaftesbury's work, though it cannot be said to have been consistently developed by him. The conflict of impulses in man was too obvious a fact not to be apparent even in Shaftesbury's roseate view of life. He recognised, indeed, not only private or self-affections, promoting the good of the individual, and "natural" or social affections, which led to the public good, but also "unnatural affections," which tended to no good whatever.[82] The reference to consequences is thus made prominent at once. The last class of affections is condemned outright because of its infelicific results; while an attempt is made to prove from experience that the courses of conduct to which the two former lead coincide. Shaftesbury contended for a real organic union between the individual and society; but, when he came to establish its nature, he made it consist in an asserted harmony of interests, while the obligation to virtue was allowed to rest on its conduciveness to personal pleasure. He sometimes spoke of virtue as identical with the harmonious development of the affections of the individual man;[83] but he expressly defined it as consisting in the individual "having all his inclinations and affections ... agreeing with the good of his kind or of that system in which he is included, and of which he constitutes a part."[84] And the two views can only be connected by proving that the harmonious development of an individual's affections will lead to the good of the species: the proof of this depending on a one-sided summation of consequences. Shaftesbury does, indeed, throw out the idea that both the self-affections and the "natural" or social affections become self-destructive when carried out so as to interfere with one another. But this, again, has only the previous calculus of the results of conduct to support it. He cannot show that the contradiction in the conception of a completely solitary being belongs also to the conception of a judiciously selfish being. The latter being loses the pleasures of virtuous action; but perhaps he may gain greater pleasures in their room. He does not develop his whole nature; but if that nature contains totally infelicific passions, the development of the whole nature is not to be recommended.

Thus Shaftesbury is unable to reach a conception of man's nature as a harmony of impulses just on account of the external point of view which makes him treat it as an aggregate, though he contends that it is an organism. His ingenious and subtle account of the relations between the individual and society does not really go to the root of the matter, because, after all, it remains a calculus of the results of action, not an analysis of its nature. And his view of the affections constituting the individual system leaves them wanting in the unity of organic connection. An effort is made, however, to supply this defect by means of the reflex affections called the "moral sense," to which he ascribes an oversight over the other affections and their resultant actions. In what way, then, must we regard the nature of this faculty and the important functions assigned to it?

It was left to Shaftesbury's disciple, Francis Hutcheson, to elaborate with thoroughness this conception of the moral sense as a separate faculty. Hutcheson did not make any important addition to the ideas of Shaftesbury and Butler. But he worked them out more systematically; and in his last work, the 'System of Moral Philosophy,' the protest against the egoism of Hobbes has found expression in a complete theory of human nature, in which the "moral sense" is supreme, and the ends of conduct independent of self-interest. Hutcheson, too, keeps more closely than either of his immediate predecessors to the way of looking at human nature which is spoken of in this volume as "naturalistic." He rejects even more decidedly than Shaftesbury—much more so than Butler—any creative function of reason in determining the constitution and direction of the moral sense.[85] "Two questions regarding it:" The questions thus arise—(a) What is the moral sense when not regarded as a rational determination of the ends of conduct? and (b) To what determination of ends or other distinction between right and wrong in action does it lead? On both these points there is a difference between his early 'Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue' (1725), and the more mature 'System,' published in 1755, eight years after his death.

Hutcheson is in earnest with the rejection of reason as a creative force. The moral sense is not, he says, a source of new ideas. Its objects are received in the ordinary ways by which, through "sensation and reflection," we come by our knowledge.[86] But just as we have a sense of beauty in the forms of sensible objects, so there is a moral sense given us from which, in the contemplation of our actions, we derive "still nobler pleasures" than those of physical sensation. "at first defined as feeling of pleasure or pain," This moral sense is "a determination of our minds to receive amiable or disagreeable ideas of actions."[87] So far, therefore, it seems to be simply a pleasure in the contemplation of certain actions which, we say, have "an immediate goodness." "By a superior sense," says Hutcheson, "which I call a moral one, we perceive pleasure in the contemplation of such actions in others, and are determined to love the agent (and much more do we perceive pleasure in being conscious of having done such actions ourselves) without any view of further natural advantage from them."[88] The significance of this position is easily seen. It is not only meant to give a criterion of moral action; it is also a short cut to the conclusion that virtue is for our private interest. The disquieting suspicion that morality may involve a sacrifice of individual happiness "must be entirely removed, if we have a moral sense and public affections, whose gratifications are constituted by nature our most intense and durable pleasures."[89] The elaborate analysis of conduct and enumeration of the pleasures which various affections and actions bring in their train, which Hutcheson gave in his latest work, were thus unnecessary as long as the position was maintained that the moral sense is emphatically a pleasure or pain, and that the pleasures it gives are the most intense and durable we have.

There was only an apparent contradiction in this theory which placed the test of morality in a pleasure consequent upon moral action, and yet held that such actions were not performed from interested motives. In the spirit of Butler's psychology, Hutcheson contends[90] that virtue is pleasant only because we have a natural and immediate tendency towards virtuous action; our true motive is "some determination of our nature to study the good of others;" and this, although not always immediately pleasant in itself, is yet succeeded by the calm satisfaction of the moral sense. The real weakness of Hutcheson's position is the fatal one that he cannot show that it corresponds with facts; that the pleasures incidental to the moral sense outweigh all others. Indeed, he defends his opinion in their favour only, in a way which reminds one of Mill's method in the 'Utilitarianism,' by making every juror stand aside unless he has pledged himself to morality.[91] It is open to any one, however, to hold that the pleasures of benevolent action and the "relish" of the moral sense are not of sufficient hedonistic value to make up for the restraints they put upon conduct and the enjoyments they oblige one to forego. Even if this position be not correct, it is merely a mistake in estimating doubtful quantities. The man who chooses the smaller pleasure will be the loser by his mistake; but we cannot say that the selfish man is to blame for not being benevolent, because the pleasures of benevolence and the moral sense are greatest, any more than we could blame the benevolent man for not being selfish, if selfishness should turn out on the whole to leave a greater hedonistic balance at the individual's credit.

A more objective determination of the moral sense is afterwards given by Hutcheson. Without professedly changing ground, he ceases to speak of it as a mere feeling of pleasure, and calls it a judgment of approbation or disapprobation. "It is," he says,[92] "a natural and immediate determination to approve certain affections and actions consequent upon them; or a natural sense of immediate excellence in them, not referred to any other quality perceivable by our other senses or by reasoning." Nor is this judgment of approbation consequent upon the feeling of pleasure the affection or action produces in us. The action is not "judged good because it gains to the agent the pleasure of self-approbation, but it gains to him this pleasure because it was antecedently good, or had that quality which, by the constitution of this sense, we must approve."[93] "but this judgment allowed to depend on feeling." But, in attempting to make clear the nature of this judgment, Hutcheson seems to return, though not in so many words, to his earlier position. To seek a basis for the judgment in reason would have been to make the "moral sense" what Kant afterwards made it, simply practical reason. This, however, would have been a "metaphysic of ethics" inconsistent with Hutcheson's whole position. He had always opposed the narrowly intellectual view of morality in Clarke and Wollaston, and he had no conception of the function of reason which would admit of an interpretation of the judgment of approbation by an appeal to a rational determination, depending upon an idea conceived as inherent in the human constitution, and to be realised in action. The judgment, therefore, is referred to a "taste or relish"[94] for certain affections and actions, and this he takes no pains to distinguish from pleasure.

The analogy he seeks to draw between the moral sense and our other powers does not really favour a distinction of it from pleasure. "To each of our powers," he says, "we seem to have a corresponding taste or sense, recommending the proper use of it to the agent, and making him relish or value the like exercise of it by another. This we see as to the powers of voice, of imitation, designing, or machinery, motion, reasoning; there is a sense discerning or recommending the proper exercise of them."[95] That is to say, besides the sense of hearing, which has to do with sounds, there must needs be another sense which has to do with our way of hearing sounds; besides the sense of sight, which has to do with form and colour, there must needs be another sense which has to do with our way of perceiving form and colour; and so with every other activity, especially those which proceed from our "highest powers." A doctrine such as this sets no limits to the manufacture of additional senses. The whole view of human nature upon which it proceeds is one of meaningless complexity, which serves the one good purpose only of showing how much ethics has suffered from a defective psychology.

The mental objects or presentations which are distinguished from one another by the difference of their characteristic qualities, and which we therefore call colours, or sounds, or movements, are accompanied by varying degrees of pleasurable or painful feeling; and it is possible to hold that the moral sense is a name for such feelings following in the train of those complexes of presentations to which we give the name of actions, or of those other recurring complexes we call affections. This, practically, was the position with which Hutcheson started in the 'Inquiry.' Benevolence pleased us and selfishness pained us; just as the taste of sugar was pleasant, and that of wormwood disagreeable. Perhaps Hutcheson departed from this theory, because he saw that if conduct was made a matter of taste, there would be no sufficient reason for condemning selfishness any more than an unusual taste. He therefore relinquished, or seems to have relinquished, the view of the moral sense as a feeling of pleasure or pain; and under the influence, no doubt, of Butler, spoke of it as a judgment of approbation or disapprobation. But he fell back on his original theory by making this judgment depend on "a taste or relish," which only lends itself to interpretation as a peculiar feeling of pleasure.

The reflex nature of the moral sense is brought out more distinctly in the 'System' than in the 'Inquiry.' In his earlier work, Hutcheson had spoken of it as directly related to actions. But it was more consistent with his maturer thought to regard it as having to do with mental powers "afterwards to be affections;" or "affections" in the first instance, and with actions only indirectly or mediately. "The object of this sense," he says,[96] "is not any external motion or action, but the inward affections or dispositions;" and this is made by him to account for the discrepancy which the deliverances of the moral sense show in regard to actions. It "seems ever to approve and condemn uniformly the same immediate objects, the same affections and dispositions; though we reason very differently about the actions which evidence certain dispositions or their contraries." This distinction is applied with unlimited confidence in its efficacy. By means of it he would explain the most fundamental differences in the moral code of men and nations. Thus people unacquainted with the industrial improvements which give the character of permanence to property, may "see no harm in depriving men of their artificial acquisitions and stores beyond their present use,"—that is to say, "no evil may appear in theft."[97]

But it is more important in another respect; for it enables the author to avoid the difficulty of finding any principle according to which the moral sense may be related to the empirical content of action. As long as the moral sense was simply spoken of as a feeling of pleasure, it could be conveniently regarded as the consequent of external actions. But if it is an internal sense distinct from pleasure, it is easier to relate it to what he calls our internal powers or affections than to action. The moral sense, then, is to be the regulator of all our powers; and by means of it Hutcheson attempts to reduce human nature to a scale of morality.

It is to be noted that, in the classification he offers,[98] what are commonly called the virtues of candour, veracity, &c., are not accounted virtues at all, but only immediately connected with virtuous affections: these are identified with the "kind" or benevolent affections, directed to the happiness of sentient beings. Within the latter there are two grounds of preference: the deliberate affections are preferred to the passionate; those which are more extensive in the range of their objects to the less extensive. With regard to the former ground of preference, the "moral sense" of the community has perhaps undergone some modification since Hutcheson's time, and looks upon enthusiasm with less suspicion than it formerly did. The other ground of preference ascribed to the moral sense refers not so much to the affection itself—which is the direct or immediate object of the moral sense—as to the way in which the affection is applied, the number of the objects to which it is directed. "mainly depend not on the nature of the affection, but on its objects." The affection of benevolence is the same in nature whether its object be wide or restricted; though difference in this respect profoundly influences the actions to which it leads. The object approved or most approved by the moral sense is therefore, according to Hutcheson, utilitarian conduct, or rather, as he would say, the calm disposition leading thereto.[99] In this way he obtains a principle for determining the morality of actions; but only through the arbitrary assertion that this principle is immediately approved by the moral sense. The connection of the moral sense with an object such as universal benevolence could only be made out by showing a rational, or at any rate an organic union between individual sentiment and social wellbeing; and Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury, has no conception of attempting this in any other way than the traditional one of exhibiting the personal advantages of benevolent conduct, and the disadvantages that accompany selfishness.

Both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson were often led astray by a tendency to interpret facts as they wished them to be, rather than as they were. Their view of the consequences of action was coloured by their optimism. Butler, too, "Butler." in spite of the difference in his general attitude to the value of human life, was not altogether free from a similar error. He thinks that Shaftesbury "has shown beyond all contradiction that virtue is naturally the interest of happiness, and vice the misery of such a creature as man."[100] But, in view of particular exceptions, or of any one not being convinced of "this happy tendency of virtue," he thinks it necessary to emphasise the "natural"Conscience an authoritative law," authority of the principle of reflection." Conscience is, he holds, a part of our inward nature; but it differs from the other parts of our nature inasmuch as it is not related immediately to an external object, but to the actions dealing with such objects, and to the dispositions leading to those actions. It is a principle of "reflex approbation or disapprobation," which is said to have equal respect to both public and private good. This tendency, however, would seem to be ascertained empirically. The deliverances of conscience are immediate judgments as to the morality of actions and affections (for Butler speaks of it as referring to both equally); and its reference to the ends which those actions or the exercise of these affections may ultimately tend to would, therefore, seem to be indirect.[101] Butler was careful, moreover, not to speak of it as an Æsthetic or sensitive faculty, but as a judgment. It is not a feeling of pleasure, but the revelation of law.

The approval of conscience is thus made the criterion of morality. But a difficulty arises as to the way in which we are to regard the authority which conscience is said to carry along with it. Butler's utterances here commonly imply a teleological reference to an end implanted in human nature, and to be discovered by observing that nature—the realisation of the end being obligatory, because it is shown to be the purpose which the author of nature had in view in making man as he is.[102] The authority of conscience thus seems to be derived from the divine purpose which it displays. It carries within itself a claim to obedience; but the justification of this claim depends on a theological basis. And hence the question of the nature and origin of conscience is at once raised, in order to determine the legitimacy of its claim to be, rather than any other part of our constitution, a divinely-implanted guide.

But more than one current of thought runs through Butler's ethical treatise. The theological reference is sometimes so used as to make the obligation to morality, and even the nature of morality, depend on the will of God: though hardly according to Paley's crude method of seeking in the external revelation of the divine command a means of uniting the divergent interests of the individual and of society. In general, Butler's ruling idea is the idea of the system or unity of human nature, for which he was largely indebted to Shaftesbury's revival of the Platonic conception. Conscience is regarded by him as the expression of this unity. But its nature is never more deeply probed. Its deliverances are justified now by its supernatural mission, and now by the more prosaic fact that it leads to our individual interest[103]—at any rate, "if we take in the future"—while it could not be recommended as a guide if it did not.[104] On one side, therefore, Butler tends to a form of theological utilitarianism, such as was common in his own day, and was afterwards formulated by Paley.[105] On the other hand, his ethics more naturally allies itself with a different theory, in which the moral law is conceived as having its source in practical reason, and the naturalistic basis of ethics is definitely abandoned.

On the whole, it would appear that the psychological ethics worked out by Shaftesbury and his school occupies an insecure position between the view discussed in the two preceding chapters and that which ascribes to reason a function in the formation of objects of desire. Shaftesbury and his followers tried to strike out a middle course between the theory that ends of action may be determined by reason, and that which looks upon all desires as being desires for objects as pleasurable. They made the attempt to found a system of ethics on human nature, and they held that that nature could not be accounted for by the simple psychological analysis of the Epicurean school as then represented by Hobbes. On the other hand, they did not see their way to adopt the "rational" ethics only known to them in the abstract form it had received at the hands of Clarke and Wollaston. But their own theory of human nature requires a principle of harmony and co-ordination among the various impulses which they were unable to give a satisfactory account of. "explanation of its facts attempted by theory of evolution." It may seem, however, that the idea of the development of man with which we are now familiar, may enable us to overcome the difficulties which formerly appeared insurmountable—showing the unity of human nature, and the tendency of its activity. The general course of evolution, to which all life has been subject, is thought to have brought about a harmony between individual and social feelings, as well as between individual and social interests, and thus to have removed the obstacles in the way of founding morality on the basis of Naturalism. It is, therefore, of importance to examine with care the ethical bearings of the theory of evolution.

PART II.
THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.