Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/830

 812 MORAL PHILOSOPHY made morality impossible, notwithstanding his principal work is entitled Ethica. But by defi- ning clear ideas as those of the reason and vague ideas as those of passion, and establishing it as the object. of existence to attain to clear ideas, he succeeded, like most other moralists, in opposing reason to passion. The being of the soul is thought. To increase this, to rise to a greater reality, to preserve and exalt our essen- tial nature, is at once the highest good and the highest virtue. Knowledge is happiness, and is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. To follow our desires is the law of practical life, and limitation, deficiency of might, is the only evil. But evil is merely a relative concep- tion of our own, formed by comparison of things with each other; there is no idea of it with God, who is always in harmony with him- self, acting according to the laws of his own essence. In the 18th century moral philosophy rested in England chiefly on theories of disin- terested feeling and the moral sense, in France on sensationalism and self-interest ; and in Ger- many the followers of Leibnitz maintained the supremacy of the reason and the doctrine of ideal good. Shaftesbury was the first to em- ploy the term moral sense, which, however, he did not define. Some of his intimations favor the theory of general benevolence proposed by Edwards. Wollaston's definition of virtue as conformity to the truth of things, which Dr. Clarke changed to the fitness of things, gives to it an intellectual foundation, since truth and fitness are intellectual conceptions. Morality thus becomes the practice of reason. Hutche- son developed the suggestion of a moral sense by Shaftesbury, and supposed conscience and taste to be separate faculties which immediately introduce us to the objects of aesthetics and ethics. But neither he nor Bishop Butler, after thus determining the subjective condition of virtue, undertook to show the objective distinc- tive quality common to right actions. Nothing therefore but the immediateness of moral emo- tion and determination is secured by their theory, since neither the moral sense nor the morality of actions is explained by the state- ment that they correspond to each other. Adam Smith, in referring morality to the prin- ciple of sympathy, rendered a service rather to the philosophy of the sympathetic affections than of ethics. Though perhaps no one has ever accepted his statement that moral approval depends first upon sympathy with the motives of the agent, secondly upon sympathy with the gratitude of those who have been benefited by his actions, thirdly upon a perception that his conduct has been agreeable to the general rules by which these two sympathies generally act, and fourthly upon a perception of the utility and beauty apparent in a system of behavior which tends to promote the happiness either of the individual or of society ; yet his analysis of the workings of sympathy is admirably .con- ceived and illustrated. It was a part of Hume's ethical theory that general utility constitutes a I uniform ground of moral distinctions. Deny- ' ing a special moral faculty, he spoke sometimes of sympathy and sometimes of benevolence as the subjective quality which prompts us to be pleased with beneficial actions. Richard Price attempted to revive the intellectual in place of the sentimental theory of virtue, claiming that not only our moral feelings but all our emo- tions might ultimately be referred to the reason. He regarded right and wrong as simple ideas of the mind. The maxim of La Rochefoucauld, " Our virtues lose themselves in interest, like rivers in the sea," describes the ethical theory of the French sensational philosophy. Condil- lac, the head of this school, regards all intellec- tual operations, even judgment and volition, aa transformed sensations; and Helv6tius, apply- ing the theory to morals, held that self-love or interest is the exclusive motor of man, denied disinterested motives, made pleasure the only good, and referred to legislative rewards and punishments as illustrating the whole system of individual action. A superior physical organi- zation alone gives to man his superiority to other animals. La Mettrie maintained an athe- istic Epicureanism ; and though Condorcet pro- posed as a goal the perfectibility of mankind in the present state, he looked only to physical improvement, and wished to substitute an em- pirical education for the ideas and sanctions of religion and morality. The materialism, athe- ism, and fatalism of the epoch, which saw in the universe only matter and motion, and had pleasure for its single aim and law, were most completely and logically elaborated in D'Hol- bach's Systeme de la nature. The influence of Leibnitz and Wolf maintained a higher philos- ophy in Germany, and the latter advanced the ethical principle that we should act only with reference to making ourselves or others more complete and perfect. Moral perfection con- sists in the harmony of the present with the past and the future, and of ourselves with the essential nature of man. Whatsoever tends to- ward or against this is right or wrong. Thus ethics is the science of the possible in life, as philosophy is of the possible in the whole realm of knowledge. A eudaemonistic and utilitarian school succeeded in the latter half of the 18th century, marked by subjective idealism, which made individual culture and happiness the highest principle and end, and cherished reli- gion on the ground that it was advantageous to earthly pleasure. Basedow, Reimarus, and Steinbart were the principal representatives of this tendency, the subjective standpoint of which appears also in numerous confessions and autobiographies, like those of Rousseau. Kant rescued ethics from the prevalent senti- mental and sensational theories. "If," said he, "happiness, and not the law of inward freedom, be made the fundamental principle, there is an end to moral science." He defines ethics as the philosophy of the laws of freedom. Freedom is an a priori fact, an element which affirms itself in the activity of the will. The