Passion or Appetite means a tendency towards certain objects with no regard to any other objects. Reflection or Conscience steps in to protect the interests that these would lead us to sacrifice. Surely, therefore, this would be enough to constitute superiority. Any other passion taking the lead is a case of usurpation.
We can hardly form a notion of Conscience without this idea of superiority. Had it might, as it has right, it would govern the world.
Were there no such supremacy, all actions would be on an equal footing. Impiety, profaneness, and blasphemy would be as suitable as reverence; parricide would justify itself by the right of the strongest.
Hence human nature is made up of a number of propensities in union with this ruling principle; and as, in civil government, the constitution is infringed by strength prevailing over authority, so the nature of man is violated when the lower faculties triumph over conscience. Man has a rule of right within, if he will honestly attend to it. Out of this arrangement, also, springs Obligation; the law of conscience is the law of our nature. It carries its authority with it; it is the guide assigned by the Author of our nature.
He then replies to the question, 'Why should we be concerned about anything out of or beyond ourselves?' Supposing we do possess in our nature a regard to the well-being of others, why may we not set that aside as being in our way to our own good.
The answer is, We cannot obtain our own good without having regard to others, and undergoing the restraints prescribed by morality. There is seldom any inconsistency between our duty and our interest. Self-love, in the present world, coincides with virtue. If there are any exceptions, all will be set right in the final distribution of things. Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way.
Such is a brief outline of the celebrated 'Three Sermons on Human Nature.' The radical defect of the whole scheme lies in its Psychological basis. Because we have, as mature human beings, in civilized society, a principle of action called Conscience, which we recognize as distinct from Self-love and Benevolence, as well as from the Appetites and Passions, Butler would make us believe that this is, from the first, a distinct principle of our nature. The proper reply is to analyze Conscience; showing at the same time, from its very great discrepancies in different minds, that it is a growth, or product, corresponding to the education and the circumstances of each, although of course involving the common elements of the mind.
In his Sermons on Compassion (V., VI.), he treats this as one of the Affections in his second group of the Feelings (Appetites, Passions, and Affections); vindicates its existence against Hobbes, who treated it as an indirect mode of self-regard; and shows its importance in human life, as an adjunct to Rational Benevolence and Conscience.
In discussing Benevolence (Sermon XII.) Butler's object is to show that it is not ultimately at variance with Self-love. In the introductory observations, he adverts to the historical fact, that vice and folly take different turns in different ages, and that the peculiarity of his own age is 'to profess a contracted spirit, and greater regards to self-interest' than formerly. He accommodates his preaching of virtue to this characteristic of his time, and promises that there shall be all possible concessions made to the favourite passion.
His mode of arguing is still the same as in the sermons on Human Nature. Self-love does not comprehend our whole being; it is only one principle among many. It is characterized by a subjective end, the feeling of happiness; but we have other ends of the objective kind, the ends of our appetites, passions, and affections—food, injury to another, good to another, &c. The total happiness of our being includes all our ends. Self-love attends only to one interest, and if we are too engrossed with that, we may sacrifice other interests, and narrow the sphere of our happiness. A certain disengagement of mind is necessary to enjoyment, and the intensity of pursuit interferes with this. [This is a true remark, but misapplied; external pursuit may be so intense as nearly to do away with subjective consciousness, and therefore with pleasure; but this applies more to objective ends,—wealth, the interest of others—than to self-love, which is in its nature subjective.]