Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/348

 THE FINAL AIM OF MORAL ACTION. 347 In the next place, the common sentiment, as generally expressed and as Sidgwick has stated it, wins our assent to its truth, because the words "pleasure" and "glow" always suggest, in spite of acquaintance with their philosophical use, the feeling which attends the gratification of the animal appetites ; and the thought of a man's doing right, in order to obtain that kind of pleasure, is morally revolting to us. The two kinds of pleasure are wholly unlike. They spring up in the mind, and are associated with entirely different sets of ideas ; their effects, too, upon ourselves and society are entirely unlike. They are what might be called antago- nistic pleasures. Their only resemblance is that they are both states of mind which, considered in and for themselves, are desirable. No word in language is abstract enough to embrace them both and not bring them too near together. It is safer to use distinct words for each. If instead of " pleasure of the moral sense " the more appropriate words " peace of conscience," and instead of "glow" "joy" be used, our assent to the common opinion is apt to be less hearty. Therefore, so far as the popular sentiment against the pursuit of the pleasure of the moral sense is due to the association of this with an unworthier form of pleasure, so far it does not constitute any argument against the inner moral sanction as the final aim of conduct. Again, much of the plausibility of the argument comes from the antithesis made between " done for its own sake " and " done for the sake of the attendant pleasure ". When we examine our actual moral experience, however, we find no such real contrast. A deed originally done for the sake of the attendant pleasure, as it becomes more habitual, is apt to be done with less and less thought of the pleasure, until it is finally done for its own sake quite mechanically. Also in proportion as deeds are sudden, the attendant pleasure, although it were the original aim, recedes into the back- ground of consciousness, and in moments of supreme urgency vanishes entirely. This transition of aim from the pleasure to the deed is as natural in the case of deeds done to obtain approval of conscience as in any other case ; so that the popular antithesis is psychologically unwarranted. And it would be hard to see how deeds which, through habit or suddenness, have come to be done for their own sake, are on that account any more virtuous. If through habit a man should entirely outgrow the need of the inner sanction as incentive, he would not be more virtuous but rather the more mechanical ; what is done from habit is commonly regarded as having no moral worth. That class of deeds