Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/624

Rh 602 ETHICS ment of external rights and duties, though decidedly in ferior in methodical clearness and precision, does not differ in principle from that of Paley or Bentham, except that he lays greater stress on the immediate conduciveness of actions to the happiness of individuals, and more often refers in a merely supplementary or restrictive way to their tendencies in respect of general happiness. It may be noticed, too, that he still accepts the &quot; social compact &quot; as the natural mode of constituting government, and regards the obligations of subjects to civil obedience as normally dependent on a tacit contract; though he is careful to state that consent is not absolutely necessary to the just establishment of beneficent government, nor the source of irrevocable obligation to a pernicious one. hume A- 11 important step further in political utilitarianism was taken by Hume in his Treatise on Human Nature (1739). Hume concedes that a compact is the natural means of peacefully instituting a new government, and may therefore be properly regarded as the ground of allegiance to 4k at the outset ; but he urges that, when once it is firmly established, the duty of obeying it rests on precisely the same combination of private and general interests as the duty of keeping promises ; it is therefore absurd to base the former on the latter. Justice, veracity, fidelity to compacts and to governments, are all co-ordinate ; they are all &quot; artificial &quot; virtues, due to civilization, and not belonging to man in his &quot; ruder and more natural &quot; condition ; our approbation of all alike is founded on our perception of their useful consequences. It is this last position that constitutes the fundamental difference between Hutcheson s ethical doctrine and Hume s. 1 The former, while accepting utility as the criterion of &quot; material goodness,&quot; had adhered to Shaftesbury s view that dispositions, not results of action, were the proper object of moral approval ; at the same time, while giving to benevolence the first place in his account of personal merit, he had shrunk from the paradox of treating it as the sole virtue, and had added a rather undefined and unexplained train of qualities, veracity, for titude, activity, industry, sagacity, immediately approved in various degrees by the &quot; moral sense &quot; or the &quot; sense of dignity.&quot; This naturally suggested to a mind like Hume s, anxious to apply the experimental method to psycho logy, the problem of reducing these different elements of personal merit or rather our approval of them to some common principle. The old theory that referred this approval entirely to self-love is, he holds, easy to disprove by &quot;crucial experiments&quot; on the play of our moral senti ments ; rejecting this, he finds the required explanation in the sympathetic pleasure that attends our perception of the conduciveness of virtue to the interests of human beings other than ourselves. He endeavours to establish this inductively by a survey of the qualities, commonly praised as virtues, which he finds to be always either useful or immediately agreeable, either (1) to the virtuous agent himself or (2) to others. In class (2) he includes, besides the Benevolence of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, the useful virtues, Justice, Veracity, and Fidelity to compacts; as well as such immediately agreeable qualities as politeness, wit, modesty, and even cleanliness. The most original part of his discussion, however, is concerned with qualities imme diately useful to their possessor. The most cynical man of the world, he says, with whatever &quot; sullen incredulity &quot; he may repudiate virtue as a hollow pretence, cannot really refuse his approbation to &quot; discretion, caution, enterprise, industry, frugality, economy, good sense, prudence, discern ment;&quot; nor again, to &quot;temperance, sobriety, patience, perse verance, considerateness, secrecy, order, insinuation, address, 1 Hume s ethical view was finally stated in bis Inquiry into the Principles of Morals (1751), which is at once more popular and more purely utilitarian than his earlier work. presence of mind, quickness of conception, facility of expression.&quot; It is evident that the merit of these qualities in our eyes is chiefly due to our perception of their tendency to serve the person possessed of them; so that the cynio in praising them is really exhibiting the unselfish sympathy of which he doubts the existence. Hume admits the difficulty that arises, especially in the case of the &quot;artificial&quot; virtues, such as justice, &c., from the undeni able fact that we praise them and blame their opposites without consciously reflecting on useful or pernicious con sequences ; but considers that this may be explained as an effect of &quot; education and acquired habits.&quot; 2 So far the moral faculty has been considered as contem plative rather than active; and this, indeed, is the point of view from which Hume mainly regards it. If we ask what actual motive we have for virtuous conduct, Hume s answer is not quite clear. On the one hand, he speaks of moral approbation as derived from &quot; humanity and bene volence,&quot; while expressly recognizing, after Butler, that there is a strictly disinterested element in our benevolent impulses (as also in hunger, thirst, love of fame, and other passions). On the other hand, he does not seem to think that moral sentiment or &quot; taste&quot; can &quot;become a motive to action,&quot; except as it &quot;gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery.&quot; It is difficult to make these views quite consistent ; but at any rate Hume emphatically maintains that &quot; reason is no motive to action,&quot; except so far as it &quot;directs the impulse received from appetite or inclination;&quot; and recognizes in his later treatise at least no &quot;obligation&quot; to virtue, except that of the agent s interest or happiness. But even if we consider the moral consciousness merely as a particular kind of pleasurable emotion, there is an obvious question suggested by Hume s theory, to which he gives no adequate answer. If the essence of &quot; moral taste&quot; is sympathy with the pleasure of others, connected by trans ference with the qualities that tend to cause such pleasure, why is not this specific feeling excited by other things beside virtue? On this point Hume contents himself with thevague remark that &quot;there are a numerous set of passions and senti ments, of which thinking rational beings are by the original constitution of nature the only proper objects.&quot; The truth is, that Hume s notion of moral approbation was very loose, as is sufficiently shown by the list of &quot; useful and agree able&quot; qualities which he considers worthy of approbation. 3 Ct is therefore hardly surprising that his theory should leave the specific quality of the moral sentiments a fact still need ing to be explained. An original and ingenious solution of this problem was offered by his contemporary Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Adam Smith Ad does not deny the actuality or importance of that sym- yuj pathetic pleasure in the perceived or inferred effects of virtues and vices on which Hume laid stress. He does not, however, think that the essential part of common moral sentiment is constituted by this, but rather by a more direct sympathy with the impulses that prompt to action or expression. The spontaneous play of this sympathy he treats as an original and inexplicable fact of human nature, but he considers that its action is powerfully sus tained by the pleasure that each man finds in the accord 2 Hume remarks that in some cases, by &quot; association &quot;of ideas, the rule by which we praise and blame is extended beyond the principle of utility from which it arises ; but he allows much less scope to this explanation in his second treatise then in his first. 3 In earlier editions of the Inquiry Hume expressly included all approved qualities under the general notion of &quot;virtue.&quot; In later editions he avoided this strain on usage by substituting or adding &quot;merit&quot; in. several passages, allowing that some of the laudable qualities which he mentions would be more commonly called &quot; talents,&quot; but still maintaining that &quot;there is little distinction made in our in ternal estimation&quot; of &quot;virtues&quot; and &quot;talents.&quot;