Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/151

135 supreme good, and is led into an absolute opposition between action from desire and action from a rational principle. When, however, he passes from the abstract to the concrete, he, with evident inconsistency, admits happiness as a part of the summum bonum or "complete good," which is thus made the end of man as a whole, both rational and sensible. But the fact that, after the complete differentiation of the sphere of prudence from that of morals, these must after all be brought into organic connection in the "complete good," shows the superiority of Butler's point of departure, and the many difficulties he thereby escapes.

Thus far we have seen what Butler means when he says that human nature is designed for virtue, and how this proposition is a self-evident deduction from the very idea of our constitution. So too the obligation to the pursuit of virtue must be an equally obvious deduction. The very notion of conscience involves its supremacy and authority. Mankind upon reflection approves of what is good, and disapproves of the contrary, and authority and obligation form "a constituent part of this reflex approbation." Hence the very constitution of our nature requires that we, as moral agents, should make it the whole business of our lives to conform ourselves to the authoritative behests of that supreme faculty which makes for virtue. In this way, then, it is seen that not only the fact of adaptation, but also that of obligation is an implicate of the conception of human nature as a totality. To deny either would be a contradiction of the nature of the self. Kant finds obligation implied in the idea of the moral law, the abstract concept of which afforded him a point of departure for his ethical system. Butler argues from the concrete fact of the consciousness of obligation to its natural and moral validity. We are not here concerned to decide whether or not Butler has two theories of obligation, one explaining the obligation to the pursuit of virtue as an end, on the ground that it is an admitted fact that it is an end, the other explaining it as involved in the very idea of 'reflex approbation,' or conscience as a discriminating, authoritative, and supreme faculty. Here it may be briefly