Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/551

537 clearness and extent of the mental vision that action becomes truly voluntary, and that man becomes free.

2. Merit and Demerit.No clearer and more satisfactory account has ever been given of what we may call the popular conception of what these terms imply, than that of Bishop Butler in his ’Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue.’ He says: " Our sense or discernment of actions, as morally good or evil, implies in it a sense or discernment of them as of good or ill desert. It may be difficult to explain this perception so as to answer all the questions which may be asked concerning it; but everyone speaks of such and such actions as deserving punishment; and it is not, I suppose, pretended that they have absolutely no meaning at all to the expression. Now, the meaning plainly is not that we conceive it for the good of society, that the doers of such actions should be made to suffer. For if unhappily it were resolved that a man who, by some innocent action, was infected with the plague, should be left to perish, lest, by other people coming near him, the infection should spread, no one would say he deserved this treatment. Innocence and ill desert are inconsistent ideas. Ill desert always supposes guilt; and if one be not part of the other, yet they are evidently and naturally connected in our mind. The sight of a man in misery raises our compassion towards him; and if this misery be inflicted on him by another, our indignation against the author of it. But when we are informed that the sufferer is a villain, and is punished only for his treachery or cruelty, our compassion exceedingly lessens, and, in many instances, our indignation wholly subsides. Now, what produces this effect, is the conception of that in the sufferer which we call ill desert. Upon considering, then, or viewing together, our notion of vice and that of misery, there results a third, that of ill desert. And thus there is in human creatures an association of the two ideas, natural and moral evil, wickedness and punishment. If this association were merely artificial or accidental, it were nothing, but being most unquestionably natural, it greatly concerns us to attend to it, instead of endeavoring to explain it away."