Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/54

 " IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 41 even though partly done from a motive which we think ought to be excluded as far as possible. It is sometimes said that, though a man cannot help having the inferior motive, he can and ought to avoid yielding to it, or ' identi- fying himself ' with it ; but here there seems to me some psychological confusion or error. I cannot understand how a man can avoid ' yielding to ' a desire, if he cannot exclude it from his mind while doing precisely the act to which it prompts. 1 Even if the motive of an externally right act were entirely bad e.g., if a man were strictly veracious with a view to gain and ultimately misuse the confidence of his hearers common sense, I conceive, would still decide that his veracious volition was right qua veracious; only that it coexisted with a wrong intention as to future conduct, and did not indicate any moral worth i.e., any general tendency to right actions in the agent. It is still more clear to common sense that bad acts may be done from the best conceivable motives ; indeed we are all familiar with historical examples of men prompted by reli- gion, patriotism or philanthropy to acts that have excited most general and intense moral disapprobation. When we contemplate Torquemada torturing a heretic for the eternal good of souls, Kavaillac assassinating a monarch in the cause of God and his church, a Nihilist murdering a number of innocent persons in order to benefit his country by the destruction of an emperor, a pastor poisoning his congre- gation in the sacramental wine in the hope of securing their eternal happiness we recognise that such acts are (so far as we know) not only subjectively right, but done from the very highest motives ; still common sense does not therefore hesitate to pronounce them profoundly bad. It may be said, however, that my argument admits that the distinction of ' good ' and ' bad,' or ' higher ' and ' lower,' motives is recognised by common sense as impor- tant ; it must, therefore, be the duty of the moralist to make this distinction as precise as possible, in its application to different classes of motives ; and in doing this he will be led to frame such a scale as Dr. Martineau's. But a careful reflection upon our common judgments or motives will lead us, I think, to interpret and systematise them in a manner fundamentally different from Dr. Martineau's. According to him, the springs of human action may be arranged in an 1 Very often the course of action prompted by a bad motive would differ palpably in details from that prompted by a pure regard for duty ; and such differences would afford occasions for " not yielding " to the bad motive. But I know no reason for assuming that palpable differences of this kind would be found in all cases.