Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/76

Rh conscience, only a part of virtue, not in any sort the whole of it, he really discovers nothing positive about the nature of virtue, but only gives us a very interesting problem about the nature of virtue. If benevolence were the sole basis of virtue, then, says Butler, for our conscience treachery and violence would be “no otherwise vicious than as foreseen likely to produce an overbalance of misery to society.” Therefore, he continues, “if in any case a man could procure to himself as great advantage by an act of injustice as the whole foreseen inconvenience likely to be brought upon others by it would amount to, such a piece of injustice would not be faulty or vicious at all.” Even so, it would not be wrong, he points out, to take A’s property away and give it to B, if B’s happiness in getting it overbalanced A’s inconvenience and vexation in losing it. But since conscience disapproves of such actions, therefore, continues Butler, “the fact appears to be that we are constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to some preferably to others, abstracted from all consideration, which conduct is likely to produce an overbalance of happiness or misery.” Were God’s “moral character merely that of benevolence, yet ours is not so.” All this now shows how full of problems our uncriticised conscience is. It is the starting-point, not the guide, of moral controversies. Conscience approves benevolence, and it also approves the repression of benevolence in cases where justice, distributive or retributive, seems to the popular mind to be opposed to benevolence. And when