There are no men, however vicious, in whom those associations do not produce constant and numerous effects. When they have not been happily cultivated, and when the counteracting associations, of which we just now made mention, have been allowed to acquire a mischievous strength; acts in opposition to them are, occasionally, but, even in the worst men, no more than occasionally, produced.
This anticipation of the hostile, or benevolent sentiments of mankind, as the natural effects of actions of a certain description on our part, is the foundation of that remarkable association of which we had very recently occasion to make mention, the association which Dr. Smith has called the love of Praiseworthiness, and which is sometimes found to be much more powerful than the love of actual Praise.
The DISPOSITION which corresponds to those MOTIVES, or the facility of forming the associations which constitute them, is the result of habit in this as in all other cases.
The AFFECTION, in this case, has the name of Moral approbation and Disapprobation. The same is the only name we have for the MOTIVE. It is also the only name we have for the DISPOSITION. The terms Moral Sense; Sense of Right and Wrong; Love of Virtue, and Hatred of Vice, are sometimes used as synonymous terms; but they are not equally appropriate. Virtue, as we have seen, is a name which is given to each of the three, the Affection, the Motive, the Disposition; Morality is a name which is applied with similar latitude.57 58
57 The foregoing analysis of the Moral Sentiment proceeds upon a number of unquestionable psychological data. That we have a strong personal interest in the virtues of Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Beneficence, in the manner stated, is most certain; and that this personal interest will incline us to practise those virtues ourselves, and to encourage them in others, is also certain. The only doubt is, as to whether the motives to rectitude of action are exhausted in this analysis.
The sufficiency of an analysis is less easily tested in mental phenomena, than in physical phenomena. The chief reason is that, in the mind, we cannot make exact numerical estimates; and, therefore, cannot show, by castings up a sum, that the assigned constituents of a compound exactly amount to the total. The several constituents put down may be actually present, without our being sure whether they are the whole. Hence the Deductive verification, so valuable in physical science, does not carry with it the same precision, in mental science.
To evade this source of uncertainty we are thrown back upon the Experimental Canons, or the Four Methods. We know by these, that if an analysis is good, there must be present in each instance of the phenomenon the causes assigned, one or more; and should one exist in a low degree, or be entirely wanting, the others must have a compensating intensity. If, on the other hand, the whole of the causes have not been assigned, there will, almost inevitably, occur instances, either without the causes stated, or with these in an obviously insufficient amount.
The following facts and considerations render doubtful the completeness of the author’s explanation of the Moral Sentiment.
The affirmation in the text is that not merely the self-regarding virtue—Prudence, but also the two great social virtues—Justice and Beneficence, are developed from associations with our own personal interest. In other words, they grow up exactly by the same course as the virtue of Prudence; they are strong as that happens to be strong, and weak as that happens to be weak; the most prudent man being the most just and beneficent man. This inference can be avoided only by drawing some distinction between the interested associations entering into prudence, and the interested associations entering into justice and beneficence; but no such distinction is drawn in the foregoing chapter, at least in such a way as to meet the difficulty thus suggested.
Now, on an appeal to the facts, we find that the virtue of prudence is not uniformly concomitant with the virtues of justice and beneficence; that, on the contrary, except in the more highly cultivated moral natures, they are frequently manifested in the inverse proportion. A human being, by cherishing interested associations, does not as a matter of course attain to either justice or beneficence. Even the most far-sighted prudence, as regards self, would not develop the whole virtue of justice, nor the whole virtue of beneficence. On the other hand, beneficence is often abundant and pronounced in cases where interested associations with self have been very slightly cultivated.
The illustration of this generic discrepancy, between the author’s theory and the more obvious facts, might be extended. There is, however, another mode of proceeding, perhaps more decisive; that is, to show that the mind contains sources of the moral sentiment besides the associations with self-interest.
It does not appear easy, at first sight, to establish the existence of purely disinterested impulses in our mental constitution; the admixture of self being so seldom unequivocally absent from human conduct. Still, if these impulses do exist, there will probably be found instances where they are manifested in convincing isolation.
Perhaps the desired isolation is most readily afforded in some of the familiar forms of Pity. There are instances, no doubt, where pity may have a selfish motive, as when we compassionate the sufferings of parents, friends, and benefactors. But, in other instances, it arises not only without any selfish bearing, but in opposition to powerful associations of interest. The pity that we often extend to enemies and to criminals is a case in point. Even when the punishment of wrong-doers is bound up with our strongest interests, the spectacle of their sufferings often moves us to remit the punishment necessary for our own protection. Now, with beings made up of purely interested considerations, the argumentum ad misericordiam, under those circumstances, would be void of effect.
Another example is furnished by those acts of lavish generosity and charity that perhaps ruin the giver, and do harm to the recipient. If one’s moral education were exclusively conducted through the building up of associations with self, by what class of associating links is this impulse generated?
It is no less difficult to account for the actions of men wholly devoted to philanthropy, like Howard. So very small is the result to self from the labours and sacrifices of such men, that we are unable to account for their motives without assuming an independent source of disinterested affections. The difficulty is greatly increased in the case of minds little cultivated, as in the heroic devotion of the common soldier.
Observation of children reveals a specific power in the spectacle of misery or suffering to awaken pity and generous sympathies. The effective impulse to sympathy has little to do with a prudential education, or with the following out of self-interest in its associations with the welfare of others. The patriotic orator never trusts wholly to interested motives; he does not omit these; but he expects much from the lively description of suffering and misery to people generally; and if the picture comes home to the experience of his hearers, they will be moved by it, on account of each other, as well as on account of their separate selves.
From such facts as these, it is admissible to lay down, as a general law, that the sight of misery in others prompts us, irrespective of our own interest, to enter into, and to relieve, that misery. This is the essential fact of Sympathy.
The principle thus announced is not an ultimate law of the mind. It may be brought under a still higher law, of which some notice will be taken afterwards (see note on the Will, chap. XXIV.), namely, the tendency of every idea to act itself out, to become an actuality, not with a view to bring pleasure or to ward off pain—which is the proper description of the will—but from an independent prompting of the mind that often makes us throw away pleasure and embrace pain. The full exposition of this principle would add greatly to the evidence for pure disinterested impulses, by showing that the fact described operates in a much wider sphere than the moral sentiment.
On a survey of the different theories of the mental origin of Benevolent impulses, we may reduce them under the following heads.
1. They have been ascribed to direct and immediate self-interest, either from the return of benefits in kind, or from the pleasure of praise and flattery. This is substantially the position of Mandeville.
2. It is said we are so constituted that the sight of misery is a pain to us; and that we work to rid ourselves of that pain, as we should work to assuage thirst, to banish toothache, or to escape reproach. This view was held by Hobbes. It is forcibly brought in in the following anecdote recorded of him by Aubrey (Lives II. p. 623).
“One time, I remember, goeing in the Strand, a poor and infirme old man begged his almes; he beholding him with eies of pitty and compassion, putt his hand in his pocket, and gave him 6d.; Sayd a divine [Dr. Jaspar Mayne] that stood by, ‘Would you have done this, if it had not been Christ’s Command?’ ‘Yea,’ sayd he: ‘Why?’ quoth the other; ‘Because,’ sayd he, ‘I was in paine to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my almes, giving him some relief, doth also ease me.’”
There is a certain amount of truth in this statement; and taking the fact by itself, we might find some difficulty in drawing the line between a volition moved by our own pain, and the acting out of the idea of pain in favour of the sufferer. The best reply, perhaps, is to compare the amount of pain incurred and of pleasure remitted or sacrificed by the sympathiser, with the utmost value fairly ascribable to his own mental pain. The pain of misery witnessed is frequent and habitual, and although it has a certain depressing effect upon the mind, yet we should generally bear it much more easily than the pains of self-sacrifice it often incites us to.
3. We may be endowed with a positive susceptibility to pleasure from acts of kindness to others; so that in doing good, we are still moved in exact proportion to our own gratification. This expresses very nearly Bentham’s view of Disinterestedness; which, however, equally with the foregoing, comes short of the facts. Supposing some such pleasure to exist, no one could show that in degree it fully corresponds to the effects prompted by benevolent impulse.
4. Habits of acting in favour of others may be formed to such an extent, that our virtuous actions, begun under our own pleasures and pains, may at last cease to have any reference to those pleasures and pains. Here, also, the appeal is to an undeniable fact of our mental constitution. Actions that begin as proper voluntary actions—on the spur of pleasure and pain—often pass into a mechanical routine, and are persisted in even when they thwart our pleasures. Any one placed for a number of years in a position of danger, and habituated to troublesome precautions, is almost sure to keep up the same routine, after the occasion has ceased; mothers are liable to this unreasonable continuance of solicitude about their children. The application of the fact to moral education is of great moment. If the young are initiated betimes into a regard to the feelings and interests of others, they will grow up with a sort of mechanical unquestioning tendency towards the same line of conduct.
These are the four different modes of stating the origin of disinterested conduct, apart from the assumption of a source of purely disinterested impulses in the constitution of the mind. Such a source has been indicated above, in what may be called the power of the “fixed idea,” having its seat in the region of the intellect, and operating to thwart the proper voluntary impulses, which are instigated by our pleasures and pains.—B.
I.
58 It had been pointed out, in a preceding chapter, that Wealth, Power, Dignity, and many other things which are not in their own nature pleasures, but only causes of pleasures and of exemption from pains, become so closely associated with the pleasures of which they are causes, and their absence or loss becomes so closely associated with the pains to which it exposes us, that the things become objects of love and desire, and their absence an object of hatred and aversion, for their own sake, without reference to their consequences. By virtue of the same law of association, it is pointed out in the present chapter that human actions, both our own and those of other people, standing so high as they do among the causes both of pleasure and of pain to us (sometimes by their direct operation, and sometimes through the sentiments they give birth to in other persons towards ourselves) tend naturally to become inclosed in a web of associated ideas of pleasures or of pains at a very early period of life, in such sort that the ideas of acts beneficial to ourselves and to others become pleasurable in themselves, and the ideas of acts hurtful to ourselves and to others become painful in themselves: and both kinds of acts become objects of a feeling, the former of love, the latter of aversion, which having, in our minds, become independent of any pleasures or pains actually expected to result to ourselves from the acts, may be truly said to be disinterested. It is no less obvious that acts which are not really beneficial, or not really hurtful, but which, through some false opinion prevailing among mankind, or some extraneous agency operating on their sentiments, incur their praise or blame, may and often do come to be objects of a quite similar disinterested love or hatred, exactly as if they deserved it. This disinterested love and hatred of actions, generated by the association of praise or blame with them, constitute, in the author’s opinion, the feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation, which the majority of psychologists have thought it necessary to refer to an original and ultimate principle of our nature. Mr. Bain, in the preceding note, makes in this theory a correction, to which the author himself would probably not have objected, namely, that the mere idea of a pain or pleasure, by whomsoever felt, is intrinsically painful or pleasurable, and when raised in the mind with intensity is capable of becoming a stimulus to action, independent, not merely of expected consequences to ourselves, but of any reference whatever to Self; so that care for others is, in an admissible sense, as much an ultimate fact of our nature, as care for ourselves; though one which greatly needs strengthening by the concurrent force of the manifold associations insisted on in the author’s text. Though this of Mr. Bain is rather an account of disinterested Sympathy, than of the moral feeling, it is undoubtedly true that the foundation of the moral feeling is the adoption of the pleasures and pains of others as our own: whether this takes place by the natural force of sympathy, or by the association which has grown up in our mind between our own good or evil and theirs. The moral feeling rests upon this identification of the feelings of others with our own, but is not the same thing with it. To constitute the moral feeling, not only must the good of others have become in itself a pleasure to us, and their suffering a pain, but this pleasure or pain must be associated with our own acts as producing it, and must in this manner have become a motive, prompting us to the one sort of acts, and restraining us from the other sort. And this is, in brief, the author’s theory of the Moral Sentiments.
The exhaustive treatment of this subject would require a length and abundance of discussion disproportioned to the compass and purposes of a treatise like the present, which was intended to expound what the author believed to be the real mode of formation of our complex states of consciousness, but not to say all that may and ought to be said in refutation of other views of the subject. There are, however, some important parts of the author’s own theory, which are not stated in this work, but in a subsequent one, of a highly polemical character, the “Fragment on Mackintosh:” and it may be both instructive and interesting to the reader to find the statement here. I therefore subjoin the passages containing it.
“Nature makes no classes. Nature makes individuals. Classes are made by men; and rarely with such marks as determine certainly what is to be included in them.
“Men make classifications, as they do everything else, for some end. Now, for what end was it that men, out of their innumerable acts, selected a class, to which they gave the name of moral, and another class, to which they gave the name of immoral? What was the motive of this act? What its final cause?
“Assuredly the answer to this question is the first step, though Sir James saw it not, towards the solution of his two questions, comprehending the whole of ethical science; first, what makes an act to be moral? and secondly, what are the sentiments with which we regard it?
“We may also be assured, that it was some very obvious interest which recommended this classification; for it was performed, in a certain rough way, in the very rudest states of society.
“Farther, we may easily see how, even in very rude states, men were led to it, by little less than necessity. Every day of their lives they had experience of acts, some of which were agreeable, or the cause of what was agreeable, to them; others disagreeable, or the cause of what was disagreeable to them, in all possible degrees.
“They had no stronger interest than to obtain the repetition of the one sort, and to prevent the repetition of the other.
“The acts in which they were thus interested were of two sorts; first, those to which the actor was led by a natural interest of his own; secondly, those to which the actor was not led by any interest of his own. About the first sort there was not occasion for any particular concern. They were pretty sure to take place, without any stimulus from without. The second sort, on the contrary, were not likely to take place, unless an interest was artificially created, sufficiently strong to induce the actor to perform them.
“And here we clearly perceive the origin of that important case of classification .… the classification of acts as moral and immoral. The acts, which it was important to other men that each individual should perform, but in which the individual had not a sufficient interest to secure the performance of them, were constituted one class. The acts, which it was important to other men that each individual should abstain from, but in regard to which he had not a personal interest sufficiently strong to secure his abstaining from them, were constituted another class. The first class were distinguished by the name moral acts; the second by the name immoral.
“The interest which men had in securing the performance of the one set of acts, the non-performance of the other, led them by a sort of necessity to think of the means. They had to create an interest, which the actor would not otherwise have, in the performance of the one sort, the non-performance of the other. And in proceeding to this end, they could not easily miss their way. They had two powers applicable to the purpose. They had a certain quantity of good at their disposal; and they had a certain quantity of evil. If they could apply the good in such a manner as to afford a motive both for the performance and non-performance which they desired, or the evil, in such a manner as to afford a motive against the performance and non-performance which they wished to prevent, their end was attained.
“And this is the scheme which they adopted; and which, in every situation, they have invariably pursued. The whole business of the moral sentiments, moral approbation, and disapprobation, has this for its object, the distribution of the good and evil we have at command, for the production of acts of the useful sort, the prevention of acts of the contrary sort. Can there be a nobler object?
“But though men have been thus always right in their general aim, their proceedings have been cruelly defective in the detail; witness the consequence,—the paucity of good acts, the frequency of bad acts, which there is in the world.
“A portion of acts having been thus classed into good and bad; and the utility having been perceived of creating motives to incite to the one, and restrain from the other, a sub-classification was introduced. One portion of these acts was such, that the good and evil available for their production and prevention, could be applied by the community in its conjunct capacity. Another portion was such, that the good and evil available could be applied only by individuals in their individual capacity. The first portion was placed under the control of what is called law; the other remained under the control of the moral sentiments; that is, the distribution of good and evil, made by individuals in their individual capacity.
“No sooner was the class made, than the rule followed. Moral acts are to be performed; immoral acts are to be abstained from.
“Beside this the general rule, there was needed, for more precise direction, particular rules.
“We must remember the fundamental condition, that all rules of action must be preceded by a corresponding classification of actions. All moral rules, comprehended in the great moral rule, must relate to a class of actions comprehended within the grand class, constituted and marked by the term moral. This is the case with grand classes in general. They are subdivided into minor classes, each of the minor classes being a portion of the larger. Thus, the grand class of acts called moral has been divided into certain convenient portions, or sub-classes, and marked by particular names. Just, Beneficent, Brave, Prudent, Temperate; to each of which classes belongs its appropriate rule that men should be just, that they should be beneficent, and so on…..
“In the performance of our duties two sets of cases may be distinguished. There is one set in which a direct estimate of the good of the particular act is inevitable; and the man acts immorally who acts without making it. There are other cases in which it is not necessary.
“The first are those, which have in them so much of singularity, as to prevent their coming within the limits of any established class. In such cases a man has but one guide; he must consider the consequences, or act not as a moral, or rational agent at all.
“The second are cases of such ordinary and frequent occurrence as to be distinguished into classes. And everybody knows … that when a class of acts are performed regularly and frequently, they are at last performed by habit; in other words, the idea of the act and the performance of it follow so easily and speedily that they seem to cohere, and to be but one operation. It is only necessary to recall some of the more familiar instances, to see the mode of this formation. In playing on a musical instrument, every note, at first, is found by an effort. Afterwards, the proper choice is made so rapidly as to appear as if made by a mechanical process in which the mind has no concern. The same is the case with moral acts. When they have been performed with frequency and uniformity, for a sufficient length of time, a habit is generated.….
“When a man acts from habit, he does not act without reflection. He only acts with a very rapid reflection. In no class of acts does a man begin to act by habit. He begins without habit; and acquires the habit by frequency of acting. The consideration, on which the act is founded, and the act itself, form a sequence. And it is obvious from the familiar cases of music and of speaking, that it is a sequence at first not very easily performed. By every repetition, however, it becomes easier. The consideration occurs with less effort; the action follows with less effort; they take place with greater and greater rapidity, till they seem blended. To say, that this is acting without reflection, is only ignorance, for it is thus seen to be a case of acting by reflection so easily and rapidly, that the reflection and the act cannot be distinguished from one another……
“Since moral acts are not performed at first by habit, but each upon the consideration which recommends it; upon what considerations, we may be asked, do moral acts begin to be performed?
“The question has two meanings, and it is necessary to reply to both. It may be asked, upon what consideration the men of our own age and country, for example, at first and before a habit is formed, perform moral acts? Or, it may be asked, upon what consideration did men originally perform moral acts?
“To the first of these questions every one can reply from his own memory and observation. We perform moral acts at first, from authority. Our parents tell us that we ought to do this, ought not to do that. They are anxious that we should obey their precepts. They have two sets of influences, with which to work upon us; praise and blame; reward and punishment. All the acts which they say we ought to do, are praised in the highest degree, all those which they say we ought not to do, are blamed in the highest degree. In this manner, the ideas of praise and blame become associated with certain classes of acts, at a very early age, so closely, that they cannot easily be disjoined, No sooner does the idea of the act occur than the idea of praise springs up along with it, and clings to it. And generally these associations exert a predominant influence during the whole of life.
“Our parents not only praise certain kinds of acts, blame other kinds; but they praise us when we perform those of the one sort, blame us when we perform those of the other. In this manner other associations are formed. The idea of ourselves performing certain acts is associated with the idea of our being praised, performing certain other acts with the idea of our being blamed, so closely that the ideas become at last indissoluble. In this association consist the very important complex ideas of praise-worthiness, and blame-worthiness. An act which is praiseworthy, is an act with the idea of which the idea of praise is indissolubly joined; an agent who is praiseworthy is an agent with the idea of whom the idea of praise is indissolubly joined. And in the converse case, that of blame-worthiness, the formation of the idea is similar.
“Many powerful circumstances come in aid of these important associations, at an early age. We find, that not only our parents act in this manner, but all other parents. We find that grown people act in this manner, not only towards children, but towards one another. The associations, therefore, are unbroken, general, and all-comprehending.
“Our parents administer not only praise and blame, to induce us to perform acts of one sort, abstain from acts of another sort, but also rewards and punishments. They do so directly; and, further, they forward all our inclinations in the one case, baulk them in the other. So does everybody else. We find our comforts excessively abridged by other people, when we act in one way, enlarged when we act in another way. Hence another most important class of associations; that of an increase of well-being from the good will of our fellow-creatures, if we perform acts of one sort, of an increase of misery from their ill-will, if we perform those of another sort.
“In this manner it is that men, born in the social state, acquire the habits of moral acting, and certain affections connected with it, before they are capable of reflecting upon the grounds which recommend the acts either to praise or blame. Nearly at this point the greater part of them remain, continuing to perform moral acts and to abstain from the contrary, chiefly from the habits they have acquired, and the authority upon which they originally acted; though it is not possible that any man should come to the years and blessing of reason, without perceiving, at least in an indistinct and general way, the advantage which mankind derive from their acting towards one another in one way, rather than another.
“We come now to the second question, viz. what are the considerations upon which men originally performed moral acts? The answer to this question is substantially contained in the explanation already given of the classification of acts as moral and immoral.
“When men began to mark the distinction between acts, and were prompted to praise one class, blame another, they did so, either because the one sort benefited, the other hurt them; or for some other reason. If for the first reason, the case is perfectly intelligible. The men had a motive which they understood, and which was adequate to the end. If it was not on account of utility that men classed some acts as moral, others as immoral, on what other account was it?
“To this question, an answer, consisting of anything but words, has never been returned.
“It has been said, that there is a beauty, and a deformity, in moral and immoral acts, which recommended them to the distinctions they have met with.
“It is obvious to reply to this hypothesis, that the mind of a savage, that is, a mind in the state in which the minds of all men were, when they began to classify their acts, was not likely to be much affected by the ideal something called the beauty of acts. To receive pain or pleasure from an act, to obtain, or be deprived of, the means of enjoyment by an act; to like the acts and the actors, whence the good proceeded, dislike those whence the evil proceeded; all these were things which they understood.
“But we must endeavour to get a little nearer to the bottom of this affair.
“In truth, the term beauty, as applied to acts, is just as unintelligible to the philosopher, as to the savage. Is the beauty of an act one thing; the morality of it another? Or are they two names for the same thing? If they are two things, what is the beauty, distinct from the morality? If they are the same thing, what is the use of the name morality? It only tends to confusion.
“But this is not all. The beautiful is that which excites in us the emotion of beauty, a state of mind with which we are acquainted by experience. This state of mind has been successfully analysed, and shewn to consist of a train of pleasurable ideas, awakened in us by the beautiful object.
“But is it in this way only that we are concerned in moral acts? Do we value them for nothing, but as we value a picture, or a piece of music, for the pleasure of looking at them, or hearing them? Everybody knows the contrary. Acts are objects of importance to us, on account of their consequences, and nothing else. This constitutes a radical distinction between them and the things called beautiful. Acts are hurtful or beneficial, moral or immoral, virtuous or vicious. But it is only an abuse of language, to call them beautiful or ugly.
“That it is jargon, the slightest reflection is sufficient to evince; for what is the beauty of an act, detached from its consequences? We shall be told, perhaps, that the beauty of an act was never supposed to be detached from its consequences. The beauty consists in the consequences. I am contented with the answer. But observe to what it binds you. The consequences of acts are the good or evil they do. According to you, therefore, the beauty of acts is either the utility of them, or it is nothing at all;—a beautiful ground on which to dispute with us, that acts are classed as moral, not on account of their utility, but on account of their beauty.
“It will be easily seen, from what has been said, that they who ascribe the classification of acts, as moral, and immoral, to a certain taste, an agreeable or disagreeable sentiment which they excite (among whom are included the Scottish professors Hutcheson, and Brown, and David Hume himself, though on his part with wonderful inconsistency)—hold the same theory with those who say, that beauty is the source of the classification of moral acts. Things are classed as beautiful, or deformed, on account of a certain taste, or inward sentiment. If acts are classed in the same way, on account of a certain taste or inward sentiment, they deserve to be classed under the names beautiful, and deformed; otherwise not.
“I hope it is not necessary for me to go minutely into the exposure of the other varieties of jargon, by which it has been endeavoured to account for the classification of acts, as moral and immoral. ‘Fitness’ is one of them. Acts are approved on account of their fitness. When fitness is hunted down, it is brought to bay exactly at the place where beauty was. Fitness is either the goodness of the consequences, or it is nothing at all.
“The same is the case with ‘Right Reason,’ or ‘Moral Reason.’ An act according to moral reason, is an act, the consequences of which are good. Moral reason, therefore, is another name, and not a bad name, for the principle of utility.”a
a Fragment on Mackintosh, pp. 247—265.
The following passage from another part of the same work, is also very much to the purpose.
“The terms moral and immoral were applied by men, primarily, not to their own acts, but the acts of other men. Those acts, the effects of which they observed to be beneficial, they desired should be performed. To make them be performed, they, among other things they did, affixed to them marks of their applause; they called them, good, moral, well-deserving; and behaved accordingly.
“Such is the source of the moral approbation we bestow on the acts of other men. The source of that which we bestow on our own is twofold. First, every man’s beneficial acts, like those of every other man, form part of that system of beneficial acting, in which he, in common with all other men, finds his account. Secondly, he strongly associates with his own beneficial acts, both that approbation of other men, which is of so much importance to him, and that approbation which he bestows on other men’s beneficial acts.
“It is also easy to shew what takes place in the mind of a man, before he performs an act, which he morally approves or condemns.
“What is called the approbation of an act not yet performed, is only the idea of future approbation: and it is not excited by the act itself; it is excited by the idea of the act. The idea of approbation or disapprobation is excited by the idea of an act, because the approbation would be excited by the act itself. But what excites moral approbation or disapprobation of an act, is neither the act itself, nor the motive of the act; but the consequences of the act, good or evil, and their being within the intention of the agent.
“Let us put a case. A man with a starving wife and family is detected wiring a hare on my premises. What happens? I call up the idea of sending him to prison. I call up the ideas of the consequences of that act, the misery of the helpless creatures whom his labour supported; their agonizing feelings, their corporal wants, their hunger, cold, their destitution of hope, their despair: I call up the ideas of the man himself in jail, the sinking of heart which attends incarceration; the dreadful thought of his family deprived of his support; his association with vicious characters; the natural consequences,—his future profligacy, the consequent profligacy of his ill-fated children, and hence the permanent wretchedness and ruin of them all. I next have the idea of my own intending all these consequences. And only then am I in a condition to perform, as Sir James says, the ‘operation of conscience.’ I perform it. But in this case, it is, to use another of his expressions, ‘defeated.’ Notwithstanding the moral disapprobation, which the idea of such intended consequences excites in me, I perform the act.
“Here, at all events, any one may see, that conscience, and the motive of the act, are not the same, but opposed to one another. The motive of the act, is the pleasure of having hares; not in itself a thing anywise bad. The only thing bad is the producing so much misery to others, for securing that pleasure to myself.
“The state of the case, then, is manifest. The act of which I have the idea, has two sets of consequences; one set pleasurable, another hurtful. I feel an aversion to produce the hurtful consequences. I feel a desire to produce the pleasurable. The one prevails over the other…. .
“… Nothing in an act is voluntary but the consequences that are intended. The idea of good consequences intended, is the pleasurable feeling of moral approbation; the idea of bad consequences intended is the painful feeling of moral disapprobation. The very term voluntary, therefore, applied to an act which produces good or evil consequences, expresses the antecedence of moral approbation or disapprobation.”b
b Fragment on Mackintosh, pp. 375—378.
I will quote one short passage more, in correction of the very vulgar error, that to analyse our disinterested affections and resolve them into associations with the ideas of our own elementary pleasures and pains, is to deny their reality.
“Sir James must mean, if he means anything, that to trace up the motive affections of human nature to pain and pleasure, is to make personal advantage the only motive. This is to affirm, that he who analyses any of the complicated phenomena of human nature, and points out the circumstances of their formation, puts an end to them.
“Sir James was totally ignorant of this part of human nature. Gratitude remains gratitude, resentment remains resentment, generosity generosity in the mind of him who feels them, after analysis, the same as before. The man who can trace them to their elements does not cease to feel them, as much as the man who never thought about the matter. And whatever effects they produce, as motives, in the mind of the man who never thought about the matter, they produce equally, in the minds of those who have analysed them the most minutely.
“They are constituent parts of human nature. How we are actuated, when we feel them, is matter of experience, which every one knows within himself. Their action is what it is, whether they are simple or compound. Does a complex motive cease to be a motive whenever it is discovered to be complex? The analysis of the active principles leaves the nature of them untouched. To be able to assert, that a philosopher, who finds some of the active principles of human nature to be compound and traces them to their origin, does on that account exclude them from human nature, and deny their efficiency as constituent parts of that nature, discovers a total incapacity of thinking upon these subjects. When Newton discovered that a white ray of light is not simple but compound, did he for that reason exclude it from the denomination of light, and deny that it produced its effects, with respect to our perception, as if it were of the same nature with the elementary rays of which it is composed?”c
c Fragment on Mackintosh, pp. 51, 52.
II.
The reluctance of many persons to receive as correct this analysis of the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation, though a reluctance founded more on feeling than on reasoning, is accustomed to justify itself intellectually, by alleging the total unlikeness of those states of mind to the elementary one, from which, according to the theory, they are compounded. But this is no more than what is observed in every similar case. When a complex feeling is generated out of elements very numerous and various, and in a corresponding degree indeterminate and vague, but so blended together by a close association, the effect of a long series of experiences, as to have become inseparable, the resulting feeling always seems not only very unlike any one of the elements composing it, but very unlike the sum of those elements. The pleasure of acquiring, or of consciously possessing, a sum of money (supposed not to be desired for application to some specific purpose,) is a feeling, to our consciousness, very different from the pleasure of protection against hunger and cold, the pleasure of ease and rest from labour, the pleasure of receiving consideration from our fellow-creatures, and the other miscellaneous pleasures, the association with which is admitted to be the real and only source of the pleasure of possessing money. In the case, then, of the moral sentiments, we have, on the one hand, a vera causa or set of causes, having a positive tendency to generate a sentiment, of love for certain actions, and of aversion for certain others; and on the other hand, those sentiments of love and aversion, actually produced. This coincidence between the sentiments and a power adequate to produce them, goes far towards proving causation. That the sentiments are not obviously like the causes, is no reason for postulating the existence of another cause, in the shape of an original principle of our nature.
In a case, however, of so great interest and importance, a rigid adherence to the canons of inductive proof must be insisted on. Those who dispute the theory are entitled to demand that it shall conform strictly to the general law of cause and effect, which is, that the effect shall occur with the cause, shall not occur without the cause, and shall bear some proportion to the cause. Unless it can be shewn that when the effect is not produced, the cause is either absent, or counteracted by some more powerful agency; and unless, when there is any marked difference in the effect, a difference can be shewn in the cause, sufficient to account for it; the theory must give way, or at least, cannot be considered as proved.
The principal case in which the effect is absent, notwithstanding the apparent presence of the cause assigned for it, is anticipated by the author, and provided for after his manner, in the first of the passages quoted from the Fragment on Mackintosh. There are actions (he observes) as beneficial as any others, which yet do not excite the moral sentiment of approbation; but it is because the spontaneous motives to those beneficial acts are in general sufficient: as to eat when we are hungry, or to do a service for which we are to be amply paid. There are, again, actions of a very hurtful character, but such that the spontaneous motives for abstaining from them may be relied on, without any artificial addition: such, in general, are acts destructive of one’s own life or property. But even in these cases the hurtful acts may become objects of moral reprobation, when, in any particular case, the natural deterrents prove insufficient for preventing them.
The author seems to think that the difference here pointed out, is explained by the fact that the moral sentiment is in the one case needed, in the other not needed, for producing the useful or averting the hurtful act; that, in short, we are made to have the feeling, by a foresight that our having it will operate usefully on the conduct of our fellow-creatures. I cannot accept this explanation. It seems to me to explain everything about the usual feelings, except the feelings themselves. It explains praise and blame, because these may be administered with the express design of influencing conduct. It explains reward and punishment, and every other distinction which we make in our behaviour between what we desire to encourage, and what we are anxious to check. But these things we might do from a deliberate policy, without having any moral feeling in our minds at all. When there is a moral feeling in our minds, our praise or blame is usually the simple expression of that feeling, rather than an instrument purposely employed for an end. We may give expression to the feeling without really having it, in the belief that our praise or blame will have a salutary effect; but no anticipation of salutary effects from our feeling will ever avail to give us the feeling itself: except indeed, what may be said of every other mental feeling—that we may talk ourselves into it; that the habitual use of the modes of speech that are associated with it, has some tendency to call up the feeling in the speaker himself, and a great tendency to engender it in other people.
I apprehend, however, that there is another, and more adequate reason why the feeling of moral approbation is usually absent in the case of actions (or forbearances) for which there are sufficient motives without it. These actions are done, and are seen to be done, by everybody alike. The pleasant associations derived from their usefulness merge, therefore, in our feelings towards human life and towards our fellow-creatures generally, and do not give rise to any special association of pleasure with given individuals. But when we find that a certain person does beneficial acts which the general experience of life did not warrant us in counting upon—acts which would not have been done by everybody, or even by most people, in his place; we associate the pleasure which the benefit gives us, with the character and disposition of that individual, and with the act, conceived as proceeding from that specially beneficent disposition. And obversely, if a person acts in a manner from which we suffer, but which is such as we should expect from most other people in a parallel case, the associations which his acts create in our minds are associations with human life, or with mankind in general; but if the acts, besides being of a hurtful kind, betoken a disposition in the agent, more hurtful than we are accustomed to look for in average men, we associate the injury with that very man, and with that very disposition, and have the feeling of moral disapprobation and repugnance.
There is, as already intimated, another condition which those who hold the Association theory of the moral sentiments are bound to fulfil. The class of feelings called moral embraces several varieties, materially different in their character. Wherever this difference manifests itself, the theory must be required to shew that there is a corresponding difference in the antecedents. If pleasurable or painful associations are the generating cause, those associations must differ in some proportion to the difference which exists in what they generate.
The principal case in point is the case of what is called Duty, or Obligation. It will probably be admitted that beneficial acts, when done because they are beneficial, excite in us favourable sentiments towards the agent, for which the utility or beneficial tendency of the actions is sufficient to account. But it is only some, not all, of these beneficial acts, that we regard as duties; as acts which the agent, or we ourselves if we are the persons concerned, are bound to do. This feeling of duty or obligation, it is contended, is a very different state of mind from mere liking for the action and good will to the agent. The association theory may account for the two last, but not for the former.
I have examined this question in the concluding chapter of a short treatise entitled “Utilitarianism.” The subject of the chapter is “the connexion between Justice and Utility.” I have there endeavoured to shew what the association is, which exists in the case of what we regard as a duty, but does not exist in the case of what we merely regard as useful, and which gives to the feeling in the former case the strength, the gravity, and pungency, which in the other case it has not.
I believe that the element in the association, which gives this distinguishing character to the feeling, and which constitutes the difference of the antecedents in the two cases, is the idea of Punishment. I mean the association with punishment, not the expectation of it.
No case can be pointed out in which we consider anything as a duty, and any act or omission as immoral or wrong, without regarding the person who commits the wrong and violates the duty as a fit object of punishment. We think that the general good requires that he should be punished, if not by the law, by the displeasure and ill offices of his fellow-creatures: we at any rate feel indignant with him, that is, it would give us pleasure that he should suffer for his misconduct, even if there are preponderant reasons of another kind against inflicting the suffering. This feeling of indignation, or resentment, is, I conceive, a case of the animal impulse (I call it animal because it is common to us with the other animals) to defend our own life or possessions, or the persons whom we care for, against actual or threatened attack. All conduct which we class as wrong or criminal is, or we suppose it to be, an attack upon some vital interest of ourselves or of those we care for, (a category which may include the public, or the whole human race): conduct which, if allowed to be repeated, would destroy or impair the security and comfort of our lives. We are prompted to defend these paramount interests by repelling the attack, and guarding against its renewal; and our earliest experience gives us a feeling, which acts with the rapidity of an instinct, that the most direct and efficacious protection is retaliation. We are therefore prompted to retaliate by inflicting pain on the person who has inflicted or tried to inflict it upon ourselves. We endeavour, as far as possible, that our social institutions shall render us this service. We are gratified when, by that or other means, the pain is inflicted, and dissatisfied if from any cause it is not. This strong association of the idea of punishment, and the desire for its infliction, with the idea of the act which has hurt us, is not in itself a moral sentiment; but it appears to me to be the element which is present when we have the feelings of obligation and of injury, and which mainly distinguishes them from simple distaste or dislike for any thing in the conduct of another that is disagreeable to us; that distinguishes, for instance, our feeling towards the person who steals our goods, from our feeling towards him who offends our senses by smoking tobacco. This impulse to self-defence by the retaliatory infliction of pain, only becomes a moral sentiment, when it is united with a conviction that the infliction of punishment in such a case is conformable to the general good, and when the impulse is not allowed to carry us beyond the point at which that conviction ends. For further illustration I must refer to the little Treatise already mentioned.—Ed.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE WILL.
WE have now considered the class of sensations, called Pleasurable, and Painful. We have also considered the Ideas of those sensations, or that revival of them which is capable of taking place, when the outward action upon the senses is removed. The Idea of the pleasurable sensation, and the Desire of it; the Idea of the painful sensation, and the Aversion to it; are respectively names for one and the same state of consciousness.
We have also considered the Ideas of the Causes of our Pleasurable and Painful sensations. We have found that those Ideas are never Ideas of the Causes separately; but Ideas both of the causes and of their effects, inseparably joined by association. They are not, therefore, indifferent Ideas; they are always either pleasurable or painful; being complex Ideas, to a great degree composed of the Ideas of pleasurable and painful sensations.
As the simple Idea of a pleasurable or painful sensation, is a DESIRE or an AVERSION; so the complex Idea, composed of the Ideas of a Cause of pleasurable or painful sensations, and its effects, is called an AFFECTION; which receives different names, according as it is modified by different circumstances; of time, for example, past or future; and if future, certainly or uncertainly, future.
We next observed, that our own acts were very often the cause of the causes of our pleasures, and of the prevention of our pains. The Idea of an action of our own, as cause, strongly associated with the Idea of a pleasure as its effect, we found to be a state of mind peculiarly important; because it excites to action. In what manner this state of mind gives birth to action, is the question which we now have to resolve.
The object of the Inquiry is, to find out, what that peculiar state of mind or consciousness is, by which action is preceded. From all men it receives the same name. It is called the Will, by every body; and by every body this Will is understood to be a state of mind or consciousness; but how formed, or wherein consisting, is variously and vehemently disputed.
Much of the confusion of Ideas which has darkened this controversy arose from the misconception, so long universal, respecting the Idea of a Cause. The will was invariably, and justly, assumed as the cause of the action; but unhappily there was always assumed as a part of the Idea of this cause, an item, which is found to be altogether imaginary. In the sequence of events called Cause and Effect, men were not contented with the Cause and the Effect; they imagined a third thing, called Force or Power, which was not the cause, but something emanating from the cause, and the true and immediate cause of the Effect. This illusion has been minutely examined, as we have already remarked, by a late Philosopher; by whom it has been proved, beyond the reach of contradiction, that the power of any cause is nothing different from the cause. A cause, and the power of a cause, are not two things, but two names for the same thing. With the Idea of Cause is always united the Idea of Effect. It is one of the cases of inseparable conjunction. The Idea of the Cause as existing, is irresistibly followed by the Idea of the Effect as existing. Not only does the one Idea always follow the other; but it is not in our power to prevent their following. Now the Idea of any thing as existing, when that idea forces itself upon us, and cannot be resisted, is that which we call Belief. In all this, however, there is nothing but the idea of an Antecedent and a Consequent, and a fixed order of Association. Our object, therefore, in this Inquiry will be completely attained if we discover which is the real state of mind which immediately precedes an action.
The actions of a human being may be divided into two sorts: I. Those which are called the actions of his Body; II. Those which are called the actions of his mind. We shall endeavour to ascertain what are the antecedents of both, and shall begin with the Body.
I. The actions of the Body are all of one sort. They consist essentially of that action of certain fibres, which is called contraction. The object of this part of our Inquiry, therefore, is to ascertain what are the states of mind which immediately precede a fibrous contraction.
We can show that muscular or fibrous contractions follow, 1st, Sensations; 2dly, Ideas: and we can also shew, that in a vast proportion of those cases, the sequence is invariable; in other words, that the Sensation, or Idea, is the cause of the contraction.
1. It is no part of our present business to adduce what has been discovered by physiologists in tracing the physical antecedents of a contracting muscle. The mental antecedent is the object of our inquiry; and whether a physical link, or more than one physical link, intervenes between it and the contraction, alters not the question as to the state of the mental cause; nor the fact as to the ultimate effect. Facts are abundant, to prove, that the nerves are the immediate instrument of contraction; and also that the effect produced by the mental state is first upon the nerves, and only through the nerves upon the muscle. A paralytic limb, is a limb, the movement of which is not consequent upon that mental state which is usually followed by such a movement. But a paralytic limb is only a limb, the nerves of which are deprived of their usual power by a disorder in that part of the brain in which they originate.
Innumerable facts are capable of being adduced, to prove that sensation is a cause of muscular action. There is, however, little necessity to be tedious with the proof; because there will be little difficulty in assenting to the proposition.
The distinction, which we formerly drew, between those sensations which we have by what is called the external senses, in other words, on the surface of our body, and those (numerous, not individually only, but also in their species or kinds), which we have in the internal parts of our bodies, it is here peculiarly necessary to remember, and strongly to remark. The muscles themselves are internal parts of the body. The feelings in the muscles are one species of those internal sensations. And, in general, as it is easy to conceive, the internal sensations are a leading cause of such actions as take place in the internal organs of the Body.59
59 The actions which take place in the interior of the body are not always, nor perhaps even generally, produced by sensations. A large portion of them are not preceded by any sensation of which we are aware, and have been ascertained to depend on nerves not terminating in the brain, which is the seat of sensation, but stopping at the spinal cord. These actions are inferred to be the results of a mere physical stimulus, operating either upon the local nerves, or upon the spinal ganglions with which those nerves communicate, and not attended with any consciousness.
Many of the instances which the author goes on to enumerate, of muscular action excited by sensation, are, in all probability, cases of this description. The muscular action is directly excited by the physical irritation of the nerves, and any sensation which accompanies it is not its cause, but a simultaneous effect.—Ed.
Some of the external cases are remarkably familiar and precise. A pungent odour enters the nostrils; first, a certain sensation follows, and immediately after, the violent action of a great number of muscles, called Sneezing. In drinking, a drop of water sometimes enters the larynx; it produces a certain sensation, immediately followed by the action of certain muscles, from which we have the very painful feeling of suffocation. There is a very remarkable exemplification of the same law, in the case of the sensation of light. The Pupil of the Eye contracts or dilates, according as a greater or less degree of light falls upon the retina. The eyelids are in perpetual motion in consequence of sensations to which we do not attend. The painful sensation pervading the body, when we plunge into cold water, produces so much action in the muscles, that we sob and respire in a convulsive manner. The lachrymal glands are moved to action, by certain effluvia, as those of onions, by smoke, and various gases, and even by certain states of the air, so as to shed tears abundantly. The action of food is similar upon the salivary glands; and of heat and cold upon the skin, the one opening, the other contracting its pores.
In respect to a great number of the contractions of muscles, which take place in consequence of impressions on the surface of our bodies, the evidence is not so precise; because, though contractions are originally performed by sensation, they are afterwards and more habitually performed by Ideas. We shall be able, therefore, to speak of them more instructively, when more familiar with the sequence consisting of Ideas antecedent, and the contraction of muscles consequent.
The action of the internal organs in consequence of internal sensations, is proved by many familiar, as well as by many interesting phenomena. The action of coughing, than which none more familiar, is the highest evidence. The sensation here, is not one of those which are neglected and obscure. A violent action of the muscles is its immediate consequence. Hiccup is also produced by a sensation in the stomach; and affords evidence definite and decisive. Vomiting is another very instructive case. We know that it is the ultimate effect of something which produces disagreeable sensations in the stomach. The sensation, indeed, in this case, is not so well distinguished from others, nor so precisely known, as in the case of coughing. We know, however, its general character, and we know well the violent contraction of muscles, which is the consequence of it. In connexion with this, we may notice the peculiar sensations in the Uterus, which produce the muscular actions of Parturition; some of the most violent belonging to the human frame. The sensations, which are the cause of cramps, are commonly obscure. It is the Effect which engages all our attention. There is no doubt, however, that it is by an internal sensation, that this very painful effect is produced. A greater proportion of those painful muscular actions called spasms, are the effect of sensations; though Ideas, also, appear to be concerned in the production of those which become frequent. One very remarkable case, which is named the Locked Jaw, is often the result of a pain produced by an external wound.