Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/626

Rh 004 ETHICS may of course be blamed for any wilful neglect which has caused him to be ignorant of his real duty. When we turn to the subject matter of virtue, we find that Price, in comparison with More or Clarke, is decidedly laxer in accepting and stating his ethical first principles ; chiefly because he (like Reid and Stewart afterwards) appeals to com mon sense rather than abstract reason as the judge of moral evidence. Thus he maintains with Butler that gratitude, vera city, fulfilment of promises, and justice are obligatory inde pendently of their conduciveness to happiness ; but he does not exactly exhibit the self-evidence of the abstract proposi tion &quot; that truth ought to be spoken ; &quot; he rather argues, by an inductive reference to common moral opinion, that &quot;we cannot avoid pronouncing that there is an intrinsic rectitude insincerity.&quot; Similarly in expounding justice, &quot; that part of virtue which regards property,&quot; he seems prepared to accept en bloc as ultimate the traditional principles of Roman jurisprudence, which refer the right of property to &quot; first possession, labour, succession, and dona tion.&quot; We must bear in mind that Price s task is consider ably more difficult than that of the earlier rational moralists ; owing to the new antithesis to the view of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson by which his controversial position is compli cated, so that he is specially concerned to show the existence of ultimate principles besides benevolence. Not that he repudiates the obligation either of rational benevolence or self-love ; on the contrary, he takes more pains than Butler to demonstrate the reasonableness of either principle. &quot; There is not anything,&quot; he says, &quot; of which we have more undeniably an intuitive perception, than that it is right to pursue and promote happiness, whether for ourselves or for others.&quot; Finally, Price, writing after the demonstration by Shaftesbury and Butler of the actuality of disinterested im pulses in human nature, is bolder and clearer than Cudworth or Clarke in insisting that right actions are to be chosen because they are right by virtuous agents as such, even going so far as to lay down that an act loses its moral worth in proportion as it is done from natural inclination. On this latter point Reid, in his Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788), adopts a more moderate and less Stoical conclusion, only maintaining that &quot; no act can be morally good in which regard for what is right has not some influence.&quot; This is partly due to the fact that Reid builds more distinctly than Price on the foundation laid by Butler; especially in his acceptance of that duality of govern ing principles which we have noticed as a cardinal point in the latter s doctrine. Reid considers &quot;regard for one s good on the whole &quot; (Butler s self-love) and &quot; sense of duty &quot; (Butler s conscience) as two essentially distinct and co ordinate rational principles, though naturally often compre hended under the one term, Reason. The rationality of the former principle he takes pains to explain and establish ; in opposition to Hume s doctrins that it is no part of the function of reason to determine the ends which we ought to pursue, or the preference due to one end over another. He urges that the notion of &quot; good 1 on the whole &quot; is one which only a reasoning being can form, involving as it does abstraction from the objects of all particular desires, and comparison of past and future with present feelings ; and maintains that it is a contradiction to suppose a rational being to have the notion of its Good on the Whole without a desire for it, and that such a desire must naturally regu late all particular appetites and passions. It cannot reason ably be subordinated even to the moral faculty ; in fact, 1 It is to be observed that whereas Price and Stewart (after Butler) identify the object of self-love with happiness or pleasure, Reid conceives this &quot;good&quot; more vaguely as including perfection and happiness; though he sometimes uses &quot; good &quot; and happiness as convertible terms, and seems practically to have the latter in view in all that he says of so! Move. a man who doubts the coincidence of the two which on religious grounds we must believe to be complete in a morally governed world is reduced to the &quot; miserable dilemma whether it is better to be a fool or a knave.&quot; As regards the moral faculty itself, Reid s statement coincides in the main with Price s ; it is both intellectual and active, not merely perceiving the &quot;rightness&quot; or &quot;moral obligation&quot; of actions (which Reid conceives as a simple unanalysable relation between act and agent), but also impelling the will to the performance of what is seen to be right. Both thinkers hold that this perception of right and wrong in actions is accompanied by a perception of merit and demerit in agents, and also by a specific emotion ; but whereas Price conceives this emotion chiefly as pleasure or pain, analogous to that produced in the mind by physical beauty or deformity, Reid regards it chiefly as benevolent affection, esteem, and sympathy (or their opposites), for the virtuous (or vicious) agent. This &quot;pleasurable good-will,&quot; when the moral judgment relates to a man s own actions, becomes &quot; the testimony of a good conscience the purest and most valuable of all human enjoyments.&quot; Reid is careful to observe that this moral faculty is not &quot; innate &quot; except in germ ; it stands in need of &quot; education, training, exercise (for which society is indispensable), and habit,&quot; in order to the attainment of moral truth. He does not with Price object to its being called the &quot; moral sense,&quot; provided we understand by this a source not merely of feelings or notions, but of &quot;ultimate truths.&quot; Here he omits to notice the important question whether the premises of moral rea soning are universal or individual judgments; as to which the use of the term &quot; sense &quot; seems rather to suggest the second alternative. Indeed, he seems himself quite unde cided on this question; since, though he generally represents ethical method as deductive, he also speaks of the &quot;origi nal judgment that this action is right and that wrong.&quot; The truth is that, since Reid accepts the common moral opinion of mankind as a final test of the truth of ethical theories, the construction of a scientific method of ethics is a matter of no practical moment to him. Thus, though he offers a list of first principles, by deduction from which these common opinions may be confirmed, he does not pre sent it with any claim to completeness. Besides maxims relating to virtue in general, such as (1) that there is a right and wrong in conduct, but (2) only in voluntary con duct, and that we ought (3) to take pains to learn our duty, and ( 4) fortify ourselves against temptations to deviate from it Reid states five fundamental axioms. The first of these is merely the principle of rational self-love, &quot; that we ought to prefer a greater to a lesser good, though more distinct, and a less evil to a greater,&quot; the mention of which seems rather inconsistent with Reid s distinct separa tion of the &quot;moral faculty&quot; from &quot; self love.&quot; The third is merely the general rule of benevolence stated in the somewhat vague and lax Stoical phrase, that &quot; no one is born for him self only.&quot; The fourth, again, is the merely formal prin ciple that &quot; right and wrong must be the same to all in all circumstances,&quot; which belongs equally to all systems of objective morality; while the fifth prescribes the religious duty of &quot;veneration or submission to God.&quot; Thus, the only principle which might not be equally well stated by Paley or any religious utilitarian is the second (also Stoical), &quot; that so far as the intention of nature appears in* the con stitution of man, we ought to act according to that inten tion,&quot; the vagueness 2 of which is obvious. A similar incompleteness in the statement of mo -al Dug? principles is fonnd if we turn to Reid s disciple, Dugald Stew 2 E.g., Reid proposes to apply this principle in favour of monogamy, arguing from the proportion of males and females born ; without explaining why, if the intention of nature hence inferred excludes occasional polygamy, it does not also exclude occasional celibacy.