Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/419

403 used by Butler himself, although they have been very generally employed to describe his doctrine of the nature of conscience. It is true that he says in the sermon on the character of Balaam that "in all common ordinary cases we see intuitively at first view what is our duty," yet he does not represent conscience as theoretically absolute and infallible in its moral judgments, or moral ideas as self-evident, axiomatic truths. Moral ideas, "he says, "are never in themselves determinate, but become so by the train of reasoning and the place they stand in." On the other hand, it is a mere matter of fact that in all ordinary cases we do determine intuitively what is right. "Conscience, exercised habitually, tends to act instinctively, and without recognition of any reflective operation." Butler has no patience with puzzles of ethical casuistry, and insists with all the fervor of his rugged eloquence that in the conduct of life the authority of conscience should not be too much questioned or weakened, that we should obey it without scruple.

The fact that Butler's theory of conscience has been interpreted as a faculty of "immediate and unerring moral insight" has given rise to the criticism that morality for him consists of a system of fixed virtues and duties intuitively perceived, and that therefore, in his view, human nature is a constant and unchanging quantity, that morality is static and not progressive, that the virtuous life consists in the maintainancemaintenance [sic] of a mere equilibrium, and not in progression towards some ideal. "It is this purely statical view," it is said, "this absence of the idea of growth, which in fact accounts for most of the errors or deficiencesdeficiencies [sic] in Butler's treatment of ethics." While it must be admitted that there is a degree of truth in the criticism, nevertheless it is a misrepresentation, it seems to me, to assert that the idea of growth is absent from Butler's account, or that the logical requirements of his system necessitate a view of morality as essentially static. Although his theory logically must, and does, in my opinion, admit growth and progress, still it is hardly to be expected that he