Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/147

131 adopted the former, but Butler properly proceeds according to the latter method. Hence for Butler the whole of virtue is contained in the maxim, "Follow nature," and the problem of ethics is to determine the true meaning of human nature. By definition, virtue becomes identified with the preservation, or, in more modern terminology, the realization of the whole nature of man. Keeping close to his ethical problem, Butler does not go behind human nature to tell us why we should follow it. All that can be said is that it is reasonable to do so. From the concept of human nature, the content of morality as well as the fact of obligation is to be deduced. If we assume an opposite content, we should land in a contradiction of the true nature of man.

His first task, then, is to establish an adequate idea of human nature as a whole. Employing, like Plato, the analogy of the state, he begins by showing that "the idea of a system, economy, or constitution of any particular nature" is "an one or a whole made up of several parts," in such a manner that "the several parts, even considered as a whole, do not complete the idea, unless in the notion of a whole you include the relations and respects which these parts have to each other." An adequate idea of a system involves also its "conduciveness" to some purpose or end. Now human nature contains several elements which, in their unity, form an hierarchy, with "conscience as reflection" occupying the supreme position, under which are placed the two coördinate regulative principles of reason, self-love and benevolence. And on the lowest level Butler groups together the manifold "appetites, passions, and affections," which terminate in particular objects as their end. Hence the fundamental relation which the constituent parts of the human constitution bear to each other is that of authority or right to rule, just as in the idea of a civil constitution. Since it is only when we take into account the supremacy and authority of conscience that we get the idea of the constitution of human nature, the proposition that our nature is adapted to virtue, in the same sense that a watch is to measuring time, is a self-evident deduction from our structure.