Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/623

Rh E T H I S 601 lutey required, or at least is only necessary as a substitute fur enlightened self-regard ; since if the harmony between prudence and virtue, self-regarding and social impulses, is complete, mere self-interest will prompt a duly enlightened mind to maintain precisely that &quot; balance&quot; of affections in which goodness consists. But to Butlers more cautious mind the completeness of this harmony did not seem suffi ciently demonstrable to be taken as a basis of moral teach ing ; he has at least to contemplate the possibility of a man being convinced of the opposite ; and he argues that unless we regard conscience as essentially authoritative which is not implied in the term &quot; moral sense &quot; such a man is really bound to be vicious; &quot;since interest, one s own happiness, is a manifest obligation.&quot; Still on this view, even if the authority of conscience be asserted, we seem reduced to an ultimate dualism of our rational nature. Butler s ordered polity of impulses turns out to be a polity with two independent governments. Butler does not deny this, so far as mere claim to authority is concerned ; l but he maintains that, the dictates of conscience being clear and certain, while the calculations of self-interest lead to merely probable conclusions, it can never be practically reasonable to disobey the former, even apart from any proof which religion may furnish of the absolute coincidence of the two in a future life. This dualism of governing principles in Butler s system, and perhaps, too, his revival of the Platonic conception of human nature as an ordered and governed community of impulses, may be partly attributed to the influence of Wollaston s Religion of Nature Delineated (1722). Here, for the first time, we find &quot; moral good &quot; and &quot; natural good &quot; or &quot; happiness &quot; treated separately as two essentially distinct objects of rational pursuit and investigation; the harmony between them being regarded as matter of religious faith. . not moral knowledge. Wollaston s theory of moral evil as consisting in the practical contradiction of a true proposi tion, closely resembles the most paradoxical part of Clarke s doctrine, and was not likely to approve itself to the strong common sense of Butler ; but his statement of happiness or pleasure as a &quot;justly desirable&quot; end at which every rational being &quot; ought &quot; to aim corresponds exactly to Butler s conception of self-love as a naturally governing impulse; while the &quot;moral arithmetic&quot; with which he compares pleasures and pains, and endeavours to make the notion of happiness quantitatively precise, is an anticipation of Benthamism. There is another side of Shaftesbury s harmony which Butler was ultimately led to oppose in a more decided manner, -the opposition, namely, between conscience or the moral sense and the social affections. In the Sermons, indeed (1729), Butler seems to treat conscience and calm benevolence as permanently allied though distinct principles, but in the Dissertation on Virtue, appended to the Analogy (1739), he maintains that the conduct dictated by con science will often differ widely from that to which mere re gard for the production of happiness would prompt. We may take this latter treatise as representing the fir.st in the development of English ethics, at which what were after wards called &quot;utilitarian&quot; and &quot;intuitional&quot; morality were first formally opposed; in earlier systems the antithesis i.&amp;gt; quite latent, as we have incidentally noticed in the case of ( umberland and Clarke.- The argument in Butler s disser- e- tation was probably directed against Hutcheson, who in his inquiry concerning the original of our ideas of virtue&quot; had definitely identified virtue with benevolence. Tho identifi- 1 In a remarkable passage near the close of his eleventh sermon, Butler seems even to allow that conscience would have to give way to Self-love, if it were possible (which it. is not) that the two should come into ultimate and irreconcilable conflict. - (Jf. arte, p. 50 S 9. cation is slightly qualified in Hutcheson s posthumously pub lished System of Moral Philosophy (17 55); in which the gene ral view of Shaftesbury is more fully developed, with several new psychological distinctions, including Butler s separation of &quot; calm &quot; self-love and benevolence from the &quot; turbulent &quot; passions, selfish or social. Hutcheson also follows Butler in laying stress on the &quot; governing * character of the moral sense ; but he still regards &quot; kind affections&quot; as the principal objects of moral approbation the &quot;calm&quot; and &quot;exten sive &quot; affections being preferred to the turbulent and narrow together with the desire and love of moral excellence which is ranked with universal benevolence, the two being equally worthy and necessarily harmonious. Only in a secondary sense is approval due to certain &quot; abilities and dispositions immediately connected with virtuous affec tions,&quot; as candour, veracity, fortitude, sense of honour ; while in a lower grade still are placed sciences and arts, along with even bodily skills and gifts ; indeed, the appro bation we give to these is not stiictly moral, but is referred to the &quot; sense of decency or dignity,&quot; which (as well as the sense of honour) is to be distinguished from the moral sense. Calm self-love Hutcheson regards as morally indifferent ; though he enters into a careful analysis of the elements of happiness, 3 in order to show that a true regard for private interest always coincides with the moral sense and with benevolence. While thus maintaining Shaftesbury s &quot; harmony &quot; between public and private gocd, Hutcheson is still more careful to establish the strict disinterestedness of benevolent affections. Shaftesbury had conclusively shown that these were not in the vulgar sense selfish ; but the very stress which he lays on the pleasure inseparable from their exercise suggests a subtle egoistic theory which he does not expressly exclude, since it may be said that this &quot; intrinsic reward &quot; constitutes the real motive of the benevolent man. To this Hutcheson replies that no doubt the exquisite delight of the emotion of love is a motive to sustain and develop it ; but this pleasure cannot be directly obtained, any more than other pleasures, by merely desiring it; it can only begot indirectly by cultivating the affection, which is thus obviously distinct from the desire for benevolent pleasure, being (as is ordinarily supposed) an immediate desire for other s good. He points to the fact that the imminence of death often intensifies instead of diminishing a man s desire for the welfare of those he loves, as a crucial experiment proving the disinterestedness of love ; adding, as confirmatory evidence, that the sympathy and admiration commonly felt for self-sacrifice depends on the belief that it is something different from refined self-seeking. It remains to consider how, from the doctrine that affection is the proper object of approbation, we are to deduce moral rules or &quot; natural laws &quot; prescribing or pro hibiting outward acts. It is obvious that all actions conducive to the general good will deserve our highest approbation if done from disinterested benevolence ; but how if they are not so done 1 ? In answering this question, Hutcheson avails himself of the scholastic distinction between &quot;material&quot; and &quot;formal&quot; goodness. &quot;An action,&quot; he says, &quot; is materially good when in fact it tends to the interest of the systeui, so far as we can judge of its tendency, or to the good of some part consistent witl that of the system, whatever were the affections of tho agent. An action is formally good when it flowed from good affection in a just proportion.&quot; On the pivot of this distinction Hutcheson turns round from the point of view of Shaftesbury to that of later utilitarianism. His treat- 3 It is worth noticing that Hutcheson ^ express definition of the object of self-love includes &quot; perfection &quot; as well as &quot; happiness ;&quot; but in the working out of his system he considers private pood exclusively
 * w happiness or pleasure.

VIII. 76