Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/50

 " IDIQPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 37 exist " for an atheistic mathematician one who has, in Laplace's phrase, had no " besoin de 1'hypothese de Dieu " in his system of the physical universe. But if he does not maintain this, I think he is bound in consistency to admit that the " authority of Conscience respecting the right "may similarly exist for the atheistic moralist. I have accepted, for the sake of argument, Dr. Martineau's distinction between ' Reason ' and ' Conscience '. But, to prevent misunderstanding, I ought to explain that, in my view, the "authority of Conscience" is the authority of Reason in its application to practice : " authority" or " obli- gation," in my view, expresses the relation that we recognise on reflection between a judgment as to what ought to be willed by us and a non-rational impulse prompting in a direction opposed to this judgment. Let us now consider more closely the general nature of the judgment to which this authority however understood is recognised as belonging. I find that in discussing this ques- tion Dr. Martineau, on the one hand, labours needlessly a point not likely to be disputed ; and, on the other hand, confuses or slurs over the distinction which I regard as fun- damentally important. We shall all, I conceive, agree that moral approbation, strictly taken, 1 relates to what Dr. Mar- tineau loosely calls the " inner spring or inner principle " of an action i.e., that it relates to the mental or psychical element of the complex fact which we call action ; as distinct from the muscular movement that follows the psychical volition, or any external consequences of this movement considered as external and not as foreseen by the agent. Further, I agree with Dr. Martineau in defining the object of the common moral judgment as volition or choice of some kind. Our difference begins when we ask what the object is which is willed or chosen. In Dr. Martineau's view the choice is always between particular impulses to action whether " propensions," " passions," " affections " or " sen- timents " ; in my view it is, in the largest and most impor- tant class of cases, among different sets of foreseen external effects, all of which are conceived to be within the power of the agent. That Dr. Martineau has not clearly seen the point at issue may, I think, be inferred from the language (cp. pp. 129-30) in which he criticises my own procedure. He 1 I say * strictly taken,' because in a wider sense of the terms we approve or disapprove of a human being and his actions without distinguishing between their voluntary and involuntary elements ; just as in Dr. Mar- tineau's words we " approve a house" or " condemn a ship," from a con- sideration of its fitness or unfitness for some accepted end.