The AEsthetic Emotions have important bearings upon Ethical Sentiment. As a whole, they are favourable to human virtue, being non-exclusive pleasures. They, however, give a bias to the formation of moral rules, and pervert the proper test of right and wrong in a manner to be afterwards explained.
10. Although Prudence and Sympathy, and the various Emotions named, are powerful inducements to what is right in action, and although, without these, right would not prevail among mankind, yet they do not stamp the peculiar attribute of Rightness. For this, we must refer to the institution of Government, or Authority.
Although the force of these various motives on the side of right is all-powerful and essential, so much so, that without them morality would be impossible, they do not, of themselves, impart the character of a moral act. We do not always feel that, because we have neglected our interest or violated our sympathies, we have on that account done wrong. The criterion of rightness in particular cases is something different.
The reasons are apparent. For although prudence, as regards self, and sympathy or fellow-feeling, as regards others, would comprehend all the interests of mankind—everything that morality can desire to accomplish—nevertheless, the acting out of these impulses by each individual at random would not suffice for the exigencies of human life. They must be regulated, directed, reconciled by society at large; each person must be made to work upon the same plan as every other person. This leads to the institution of Government and Authority, with the correlatives of Law, Obligation, and Punishment. Our natural impulses for good are now directed into an artificial channel, and it is no longer optional whether they shall fall into that channel. The nature of the case requires all to conform alike to the general arrangements, and whoever is not sufficiently urged by the natural motives, is brought under the spur of a new kind of prudential motive—Punishment.
Government, Authority, Law, Obligation, Punishment, are all implicated in the same great Institution of Society, to which Morality owes its chief foundation, and the Moral Sentiment its special attribute. Morality is not Prudence, nor Benevolence, in their primitive or spontaneous manifestations; it is the systematic codification of prudential and benevolent actions, rendered obligatory by what is termed penalties or Punishment; an entirely distinct motive, artificially framed by human society, but made so familiar to every member of society as to be a second nature. None are allowed to be prudential or sympathizing in their own way. Parents are compelled to nourish their own children; servants to obey their own masters, to the neglect of other regards; all citizens have to abide by the awards of authority; bargains are to be fulfilled according to a prescribed form and letter; truth is to be spoken on certain definite occasions, and not on others. In a formed society, the very best impulses of nature fail to guide the citizen's actions. No doubt there ought to be a general coincidence between what Prudence and Sympathy would dictate, and what Law dictates; but the precise adjustment is a matter of institution. A moral act is not merely an act tending to reconcile the good of the agent with the good of the whole society; it is an act, prescribed by the social authority, and rendered obligatory upon every citizen. Its morality is constituted by its authoritative prescription, and not by its fulfilling the primary ends of the social institution. A bad law is still a law; an ill-judged moral precept is still a moral precept, felt as such by every loyal citizen.
11. It may be proved, by such evidence as the case admits of, that the peculiarity of the Moral Sentiment, or Conscience, is identified with our education under government, or Authority.
Conscience is described by such terms as moral approbation and disapprobation; and involves, when highly developed, a peculiar and unmistakeable revulsion of mind at what is wrong, and a strong resentment towards the wrong-doer, which become Remorse, in the case of self.
It is capable of being proved, that there is nothing natural or primitive in these feelings, except in so far as the case happens to concur with the dictates of Self-interest, or Sympathy, aided by the Emotions formerly specified. Any action that is hostile to our interest, excites a form of disapprobation, such as belongs to wounded self-interest; and any action that puts another to pain may so affect our natural sympathy as to be disapproved, and resented on that ground. These natural or inborn feelings are always liable to coincide with moral right and wrong, although they are not its criterion or measure in the mind of each individual. But in those cases where an unusually strong feeling of moral disapprobation is awakened, there is apt to be a concurrence of the primitive motives of self, and of fellow-feeling; and it is the ideal of good law, and good morality to coincide with a certain well-proportioned adjustment of the Prudential and the Sympathetic regards of the individual.
The requisite allowance being made for the natural impulses, we must now adduce the facts, showing that the characteristic of the Moral Sense is an education under Law, or Authority, through the instrumentality of Punishment.
(1) It is a fact that human beings living in society are placed under discipline, accompanied by punishment. Certain actions are forbidden, and the doers of them are subjected to some painful infliction; which is increased in severity if they are persisted in. Now, what would be the natural consequence of such a system, under the known laws of feeling, will, and intellect? Would not an action that always brings down punishment be associated with the pain and the dread of punishment? Such an association is inevitably formed, and becomes at least a part, and a very important part, of the sense of duty; nay, it would of itself, after a certain amount of repetition, be adequate to restrain for ever the performance of the action, thus attaining the end of morality.