fore, to avoid the judgment passed upon them by Schleiermacher, that "the English school of Shaftesbury, with all their talk about virtue, are really given up to pleasure.” 1

may be made

to depend

on the moral

sense.

At the same time, their writings constantly sug- 3. Ethics gest a theory of morals which is neither obliged to adopt off-hand a utilitarian criterion of virtue, nor forced to fall back upon the egoistic sanctions of personal pleasure and pain. Their psychological theory points to an ethical doctrine in which pleasure is neither the sole end of action, nor its sole motive. They do not, indeed, make quite clear the transition from the psychological to the ethical point of view; and critics are still fond of confronting Butler with the objection he anticipated-Why ought I to obey my conscience? The apparent petitio principii of Butler's answer, Because it is the law of your nature, is due to the way in which the teleological standpoint is introduced. The purpose of which (according to Butler) man is the vehicle or realising organism is spoken of as a law externally imposed, and deriving its authority, not from its own nature, but from the nature of its origin.

There would seem to be one way only to surmount the difficulty arising from the variety of impulses of which the nature of man is made up, and that is by consistently following out the teleo1 Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803), p. 54.

Different views of the nature of

the moral

sense.

(a) The harmony of impulses. Shaftes

bury's

theory.

logical point of view. But what, the question is, is the final or comprehensive end to which human nature points amidst this diversity of objects of striving? The doctrine of the "moral sense attempts to answer the question. Now this moral sense may either be regarded as not itself a separate faculty, but simply an expression for the harmony of human tendencies; or it may be looked upon as a separate and superior capacity, which, again, may either be interpreted in terms of sense, or of the understanding the former interpretation leading to its identification with pleasure, the latter to its being conceived as law.

These different methods were attempted by the English moralists-the first, however, to a less extent than the others. But it inspired much of Shaftesbury's work, though it cannot be said to have been consistently developed by him. The conflict of impulses in man was too obvious a fact not to be apparent even in Shaftesbury's roseate view of life. He recognised, indeed, not only private or self-affections, promoting the good of the individual, and “natural” or social affections, which led to the public good, but also "unnatural affections," which tended to no good whatever.1 The reference to consequences is thus made prominent at once. The last class of affections is 1 Inquiry, II. i. 3.

condemned outright because of its infelicific results; while an attempt is made to prove from experience that the courses of conduct to which the two former lead coincide. Shaftesbury contended for a real organic union between the individual and society; but, when he came to establish its nature, he made it consist in an asserted harmony of interests, while the obligation to virtue was allowed to rest on its conduciveness to personal pleasure. He sometimes spoke of virtue as identical with the harmonious development of the affections of the individual man;1 but he expressly defined it as consisting in the individual "having all his inclinations and affections agreeing with the good of his kind or of that system in which he is included, and of which he constitutes a part."2 And the two views can only be connected by proving that the harmonious development of an individual's affections will lead to the good of the species: the proof of this depending on a one-sided summation of consequences. Shaftesbury does, indeed, throw out the idea that both the self-affections and the "natural" or social affections become self-destructive when carried out so as to interfere with one another. But this, again, has only the previous calculus of the results of conduct to support it. He cannot show that the contradiction in the conception of a completely solitary being belongs also to the con1 Inquiry, II. i. 3; II. ii. 2. 2 Ibid., II. i. 1.

(b) A separate faculty. Hutcheson.

ception of a judiciously selfish being. The latter being loses the pleasures of virtuous action; but perhaps he may gain greater pleasures in their room. He does not develop his whole nature; but if that nature contains totally infelicific passions, the development of the whole nature is not to be recommended.

Thus Shaftesbury is unable to reach a conception of man's nature as a harmony of impulses just on account of the external point of view which makes him treat it as an aggregate, though he contends that it is an organism. His ingenious and subtle account of the relations between the individual and society does not really go to the root of the matter, because, after all, it remains a calculus of the results of action, not an analysis of its nature. And his view of the affections constituting the individual system leaves them wanting in the unity of organic connection. An effort is made, however, to supply this defect by means of the reflex affections called the "moral sense," to which he ascribes an oversight over the other affections and their resultant actions. In what way, then, must we regard the nature of this faculty and the important functions assigned to it?

It was left to Shaftesbury's disciple, Francis Hutcheson, to elaborate with thoroughness this conception of the moral sense as a separate faculty. Hutcheson did not make any important addition

to the ideas of Shaftesbury and Butler. But he worked them out more systematically; and in his last work, the System of Moral Philosophy,' the protest against the egoism of Hobbes has found expression in a complete theory of human nature, in which the "moral sense is supreme, and the ends of conduct independent of self-interest. Hutcheson, too, keeps more closely than either of his immediate predecessors to the way of looking at human nature which is spoken of in this volume as "naturalistic." He rejects even more decidedly than Shaftesbury-much more so than Butler-any creative function of reason in determining the constitution and direction of the moral sense.

tions regard

ing it :

The questions thus arise-(a) What is the Two quesmoral sense when not regarded as a rational determination of the ends of conduct? and (b) To what determination of ends or other distinction between right and wrong in action does it lead? On both these points there is a difference between his early Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue' (1725), and the more mature' System,' published in 1755, eight years after his death.

1 "What is Reason but that sagacity we have in prosecuting any end? The ultimate end proposed by the common moralists is the happiness of the agent himself, and this certainly he is determined to pursue from instinct. Now may not another instinct towards the public, or the good of others, be as proper a principle of virtue as the instinct toward private happiness?" -Hutcheson, Inquiry, p. 115.