Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/412

396 its restricted use, as the supreme regulative principle of reason, conscience passes judgment upon actions and "pronounces some to be in themselves just, right, good; others to be in themselves evil, wrong, unjust." Upon this reflection, the consciousness arises that the natural right to judge belongs to it, that such judgment speaks with authority, and puts us under obligation to hearken to it, if we are to follow the law of our nature. Thus what may be vaguely called 'feeling' bears witness to the validity of reason's discrimination.

By 'conscience,' then, Butler means "a capacity of reflecting upon actions and characters, and making them an object to our thought." "And in doing this, we naturally and unavoidably approve some actions, under the peculiar view of their being virtuous and of good desert; and disapprove others, as vicious and of ill desert." The first step in the process is the reflective discrimination, and the second step is the consciousness of the value and authority of the reflective judgment, or what might be called the emotion of Tightness, with the sense of duty, obligation, or oughtness, which is involved in the concrete mental state and is not additional or merely concomitant. The distinction between what I have here artificially termed the two steps in the process may throw light upon a serious difficulty involved in the problem. From it we may see that, for Butler, the real discernment of virtue and vice is not dependent upon a mere ultimate psychological fact, a consciousness of approval or the contrary, but upon an act of reason. It is conscience as intellectual reflection which distinguishes and determines on a rational principle and standard what is virtue and what is vice. It is only after the action has been reflected upon and determined as good or evil, that the attendant consciousness of approval or disapproval arises. In other words, the discernment of the right or the wrong is a prius to the approval or disapproval, which is experienced in consciousness only "under the peculiar mew" of the contemplated course of action as being virtuous or vicious.