Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/552

538 Butler's account amounts in brief to this, that moral evil and suffering are associated in our minds in such a manner, that when the one is observed we look for and desire the other. When there is conduct that we judge to be wrong, we look for pain to accrue to the agent, which pain, viewed in connection with the wrong act, is punishment. Similarly, we are pleased when the good deed is followed by pleasure to the doer. Again, when we see a case of misery we are sympathetically unhappy, unless it is shown that this suffering is a consequent of moral evil, in which case our sympathy ceases, or at all events is lessened. In all these respects Butler's description is perfectly correct. Granting, however, that this is so, we have here, it must be noticed, simply a psychological fact, a case of association which when it occurs gives pleasure, and the absence of which produces pain. We have no right, prima facie, to assume that we ought to rejoice when the sinner suffers or the good man is made happy. The moral justification for our satisfaction in the meting out of 'poetic justice' must rest on experience. It must be based on the fact that the association of moral and physical evil, and of moral and physical good respectively, has been found to conduce to the increase of human welfare. It is one thing to say that we do like to see a criminal punished, and quite another to say that we ought to like to see him punished; the latter can only be proved by showing that the pain inflicted usually results in a larger good. If good and ill desert, then, are legitimate and permanently useful ethical concepts, it will not be enough to point out, with Butler, that they are due to an association of ideas which is natural; it must also be shown that they do not lose their significance when the nature of this association is critically investigated.

Merit and demerit, or good and ill desert, are terms which we apply to certain classes of action to express the sense we have that it is fitting and proper such actions should meet with praise and reward on the one hand, or blame and punishment on the other. The question, then, arises, whether, supposing human character and conduct are determined, and must