Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/622

Rh 600 ETHICS individual s happiness is promoted by developing and exercising his social affections, mental pleasures being superior to bodily, and the pleasures of benevolence the richest of all. In discussing this he distinguishes, with well-applied subtlety, between the pleasurableness of the benevolent emotions themselves, the sympathetic enjoy ment of the happiness of others, and the pleasure arising from a consciousness of their love and esteem. He then exhibits the unhappiness that results from any excess of the self-regarding impulses, bodily appetite, desire of wealth, emulation, resentment, even love of life itself ; and ends by dwelling on the intrinsic painfulness of all malevolence. One more special impulse remains to be noticed. We have seen that goodness of character consists in a certain balance and harmony of self-regarding and social affections. But virtue, in Shaftesbury s view, is something more ; it implies a recognition of moral goodness and immediate preference of it for its own sake. This immediate pleasure that we take in goodness (and displeasure in its opposite) is due to a susceptibility which he calls the &quot; reflex &quot; or &quot; moral &quot; sense, and compares with our susceptibility to beauty and deformity in external things ; it furnishes both an additional direct impulse to good conduct, and an additional gratification to be taken into account in the reckoning which proves the coincidence of virtue and happiness. This doctrine of the moral sense is sometimes represented as Shaftesbury s cardinal tenet ; but though characteristic and important, it is not really necessary to his main argument ; it is the crown rather than the key stone of his ethical structure. The appearance of Shaftesbury s Characteristics (1713) marks a turning-point in the history of English ethical thought. With the generation of moralists that followed the consideration of abstract rational principles falls into the background, and its place is taken by introspective study of the human mind, observation of the play of the various impulses and sentiments. This empirical psychology had not indeed been neglected by previous writers. More, among others, had imitated Descartes in a discussion of the passions, and Locke s essay had given a still stronger impulse in the same direction ; still, Shaftesbury is the first moralist who distinctly takes psychological experience as the basis of ethics. His suggestions were developed by Hutcheson into one of the most elaborate systems of moral philosophy which we possess ; through Hutcheson, if not directly, they influenced Hume s speculations, and are thus connected with later utilitarianism ; while again, the substance of Shaftesbury s main argument was adopted by Butler, though it could not pass the scrutiny of that powerful and cautious intellect without receiving important modifications and additions. On the other hand, the ethical optimism of Shaftesbury, connected as it was with a natural theology that implied the Christian scheme to be superfluous, challenged attack equally from orthodox divines Maude- and from infidel pessimists. Of these latter Mandeville, ville. the author of The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefits (1724), was a conspicuous if not a typical specimen. He can hardly be called a &quot; moralist ; &quot; and though it is impossible to deny him a considerable share of philosophical penetration, his anti-moral paradoxes have not even apparent coherence. He is convinced that virtue (where it is more than a mere pretence) is purely artificial ; but not quite certain whether it is a useless trammel of appetites and passions that are advantageous to society, or a device creditable to the politicians who introduced it by playing upon the &quot; pride and vanity &quot; of the &quot; silly creature man.&quot; The view, however, to which he gave eccentric expression, that moral regulation is something alien to the natural man, and imposed on him from without, seems to have been very current in the polite society of bis time, as we learn both from Berkeley s Aldphron and from Butler s more famous sermons. The view of &quot; human nature &quot; against which Butler ButU preached was not exactly Mandeville s, nor was it properly to be called Hobbist, although Butler fairly treats it as having a philosophical basis in Hobbes s psychology. It was, so to say, Hobbism turned inside out, rendered licen tious and anarchical instead of constructive. Hobbes had said &quot; the natural state of man is non-moral, unregulated ; moral rules are means to the end of peace, which is a means to the end of self-preservation.&quot; On this view morality, so far as Hobbes deals with it, though conven tional and dependent for its actuality on the social com pact which establishes government, is actually binding on man as a reasonable being. But the quasi-theistic assump tion that what is natural must be reasonable remained in the minds of Hobbes s most docile readers ; and in com bination with his new thesis that unrestrained egoism is natural, tended to produce results which, though not per haps practically subversive of peace, were at any rate dangerous to social well-being. To meet this view Butler does not content himself, as he is sometimes carelessly sup posed to do, with simply insisting on the natural claim to authority of the conscience which his opponent repudiated as artificial ; he also uses a more subtle and effective argument ad hominem. He first follows Shaftesbury in ex hibiting the social affections as no less natural than the appetites and desires which tend more directly to self-pre servation ; then going further and reviving the Stoic view of the prima naturae, the first objects of natural appetites, he argues that pleasure is not the primary aim even of the impulses which Shaftesbury allowed to be &quot; self-affections ; &quot; but rather a result which follows upon their attaining their natural ends. Thus the object (e.g.) of hunger is not the pleasure of eating but food ; : hunger is, therefore, strictly speaking, no more &quot; interested&quot; than benevolence ; granting that the pleasures of the table are an important element in the happiness at which self-love aims, the same may certainly be said for the pleasures of love and sympathy. Further, so far from bodily appetites (or other particular desires) being forms of self-love, there is no one of them which under certain circumstances may not come into conflict with it. Indeed, it is common enough for men to sacrifice to passion what they know to be their true interests ; at the same time we do not consider such conduct &quot;natural &quot; in man as a rational being ; we rather regard it as natural for him to govern his transient impulses. Thus the notion of natural unregulated egoism turns out to be a psychologi cal chimsera ; for (1) man s primary impulses cannot be sweepingly called egoistic in any sense, since the objects of all are other than his own happiness, and the tendencies of some are as obviously social in the first instance as those of others are self-regarding ; and (2) a man cannot be con sistently egoistic without being continually self-regulative. Indeed, we may say that an egoist must be doubly self- regulative, since rational self-love ought to restrain not only other impulses, but itself also ; for as happiness is made up of feelings that result from the satisfaction of impulses other than self-love, any over-development of the latter, enfeebling these other impulses, must proportionally diminish the happiness at which self-love aims. If, then, it be admitted that human impulses are naturally under government, the natural claim of conscience or the moral faculty to be the supreme governor will be hardly denied. But has not self-love also, by Butler s own account, a similar authority, which may come into conflict with that of conscience 1 Butler fully admits this, and, in fact, grounds on it an important criticism of Shaftesbury. We have seen that in the latter s system the &quot; moral sense &quot; is not abso-