of their characteristic qualities, and which we therefore call colours, or sounds, or movements, are accompanied by varying degrees of pleasurable or painful feeling; and it is possible to hold that the moral sense is a name for such feelings following in the train of those complexes of presentations to which we give the name of actions, or of those other recurring complexes we call affections. This, practically, was the position with which Hutcheson started in the Inquiry.' Benevolence pleased us and selfishness pained us; just as the taste of sugar was pleasant, and that of wormwood disagreeable. Perhaps Hutcheson departed from this theory, because he saw that if conduct was made a matter of taste, there would be no sufficient reason for condemning selfishness any more than an unusual taste. He therefore relinquished, or seems to have relinquished, the view of the moral sense as a feeling of pleasure or pain; and under the influence, no doubt, of Butler, spoke of it as a judgment of approbation or disapprobation. But he fell back on his original theory by making this judgment depend on "a taste or relish," which only lends itself to interpretation as a peculiar feeling of pleasure.

jects of the moral sense:

The reflex nature of the moral sense is brought (8) The obout more distinctly in the System' than in the 'Inquiry.' In his earlier work, Hutcheson spoken of it as directly related to actions.

had first said to

But

it was more consistent with his maturer thought

be actions;

afterwards to be affections;

to regard it as having to do with mental powers or "affections" in the first instance, and with actions only indirectly or mediately. "The object of this sense," he says,1 "is not any external motion or action, but the inward affections or dispositions;" and this is made by him to account for the discrepancy which the deliverances of the moral sense show in regard to actions. It seems ever to approve and condemn uniformly the same immediate objects, the same affections and dispositions; though we reason very differently about the actions which evidence certain dispositions or their contraries." This distinction is applied with unlimited confidence in its efficacy. By means of it he would explain the most fundamental differences in the moral code of men and nations. Thus people unacquainted with the industrial improvements which give the character of permanence to property, may "see no harm in depriving men of their artificial acquisitions and stores beyond their present use," -that is to say, no evil may appear in theft.” 2

But it is more important in another respect; for it enables the author to avoid the difficulty of finding any principle according to which the moral sense may be related to the empirical content of action. As long as the moral sense was simply spoken of as a feeling of pleasure, it could be conveniently regarded as the consequent of ex

ternal actions. But if it is an internal sense distinct from pleasure, it is easier to relate it to what he calls our internal powers or affections than to action. The moral sense, then, is to be the regulator of all our powers; and by means of it Hutcheson attempts to reduce human nature to a scale of morality.

grounds of

preference

It is to be noted that, in the classification he but its offers,' what are commonly called the virtues of candour, veracity, &c., are not accounted virtues at all, but only immediately connected with virtuous affections: these are identified with the "kind" or benevolent affections, directed to the happiness of sentient beings. Within the latter there are two grounds of preference: the deliberate affections are preferred to the passionate; those which are more extensive in the range of their objects to the less extensive. With regard to the former ground of preference, the "moral sense" of the community has perhaps undergone some modification since Hutcheson's time, and looks upon enthusiasm with less suspicion than it formerly did. The other ground of preference ascribed to the moral sense refers not so much to the affection itself—which is the direct

or immediate object of the moral sense- -as to the way in which the affection is applied, the number mainly deof the objects to which it is directed. The affec

1 System, i. 68 ff. With this may be compared the elaborate classification of motives, according to their moral quality, in Dr Martineau's' Types of Ethical Theory,' ii. 176 ff.

pend not on

the nature

of the affec

tion of benevolence is the same in nature whether tion, but on its object be wide or restricted; though difference its objects. in this respect profoundly influences the actions to which it leads. The object approved or most approved by the moral sense is therefore, according to Hutcheson, utilitarian conduct, or rather, as he would say, the calm disposition leading thereto.1 In this way he obtains a principle for determining the morality of actions; but only through the arbitrary assertion that this principle is immediately approved by the moral sense. The connection of the moral sense with an object such as universal benevolence could only be made out by showing a rational, or at any rate an organic union between individual sentiment and social wellbeing; and Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury, has no conception of attempting this in any other way than the traditional one of exhibiting the personal advantages of benevolent conduct, and the disadvantages that accompany selfishness.

(c) Third

view of the

Both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson were often led moral sense. astray by a tendency to interpret facts as they wished them to be, rather than as they were. Their view of the consequences of action was coloured by their optimism. Butler, too, in spite of the difference in his general attitude to the value of human life, was not altogether free from 1 System, i. 50.

Butler.

a similar error. He thinks that Shaftesbury "has shown beyond all contradiction that virtue is naturally the interest or happiness, and vice the misery of such a creature as man." 1 But, in view of par

ticular exceptions, or of any

one not being con

vinced of "this happy tendency of virtue," he

an authori

Con- tative law,

thinks it necessary to emphasise the "natural Conscience authority of the principle of reflection." science is, he holds, a part of our inward nature; but it differs from the other parts of our nature inasmuch as it is not related immediately to an external object, but to the actions dealing with such objects, and to the dispositions leading to those actions. It is a principle of "reflex approbation or disapprobation," which is said to have equal respect to both public and private good. This tendency, however, would seem to be ascertained empirically. The deliverances of conscience are immediate judgments as to the morality of actions and affections (for Butler speaks of it as referring to both equally); and its reference to the ends which those actions or the exercise of these affections may ultimately tend to would, therefore, seem to be indirect.2 Butler was careful, moreover, not to speak of it as an aesthetic 1 Sermons, Pref.

Although it is not "at all doubtful in the general, what course of action this faculty or practical discerning power within us, approves. . It is . . . justice, veracity, and regard to the common good."-Dissertation on Virtue.