Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics

by Alexander Bain

On the other hand, reason is insufficient of itself to constitute the feeling of moral approbation or disapprobation. Reason shows the means to an end; but if we are otherwise indifferent to the end, the reasonings fall inoperative on the mind. Here then a sentiment must display itself, a delight in the happiness of men, and a repugnance to what causes them misery. Reason teaches the consequences of actions; Humanity or Benevolence is roused to make a distinction in favour of such as are beneficial.

He adduces a number of illustrations to show that reason alone is insufficient to make a moral sentiment. He bids us examine Ingratitude, for instance; good offices bestowed on one side, ill-will on the other. Reason might say, whether a certain action, say the gift of money, or an act of patronage, was for the good of the party receiving it, and whether the circumstances of the gift indicated a good intention on the part of the giver; it might also say, whether the actions of the person obliged were intentionally or consciously hurtful or wanting in esteem to the person obliging. But when all this is made out by reason, there remains the sentiment of abhorrence, whose foundations must be in the emotional part of our nature, in our delight in manifested goodness, and our abhorrence of the opposite.

He refers to Beauty or Taste as a parallel case, where there may be an operation of the intellect to compute proportions, but where the elegance or beauty must arise in the region of feeling. Thus, while reason conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood, sentiment or emotion must give beauty and deformity, vice and virtue.

Appendix No. II. is a discussion of SELF-LOVE. The author adverts first to the position that benevolence is a mere pretence, a cheat, a gloss of self-love, and dismisses it with a burst of indignation. He next considers the less offensive view, that all benevolence and generosity are resolvable in the last resort into self-love. He does not attribute to the holders of this opinion any laxity in their own practice of virtue, as compared with other men. Epicurus and his followers were no strangers to probity; Atticus and Horace were men of generous dispositions; Hobbes and Locke were irreproachable in their lives. These men all allowed that friendship exists without hypocrisy; but considered that, by a sort of mental chemistry, it might be made out self-love, twisted and moulded by a particular turn of the imagination. But, says Hume, as some men have not the turn of imagination, and others have, this alone is quite enough to make the widest difference of human characters, and to stamp one man as virtuous and humane, and another vicious and meanly interested. The analysis in no way sets aside the reality of moral distinctions. The question is, therefore, purely speculative.

As a speculation, it is open to these objections. (1) Being contrary to the unprejudiced notions of mankind, it demands some very powerful aid from philosophy. On the face of things, the selfish passions and the benevolent passions are widely distinguished, and no hypothesis has ever yet so far overcome the disparity as to show that the one could grow out of the other; we may discern in the attempts that love of simplicity, which has done so much harm to philosophy.

The Animals are susceptible of kindness; shall we then attribute to them, too, a refinement of self-interest? Again, what interest can a fond mother have in view who loses her health in attendance on a sick child, and languishes and dies of grief when relieved from the slavery of that attendance?

(2) But farther, the real simplicity lies on the side of independent and disinterested benevolence. There are bodily appetites that carry us to their objects before sensual enjoyment; hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their end; the gratification follows, and becomes a secondary desire. [A very questionable analysis.] So there are mental passions, as fame, power, vengeance, that urge us to act, in the first instance; and when the end is attained, the pleasure follows. Now, as vengeance may be so pursued as to make us neglect ease, interest, and safety, why may we not allow to humanity and friendship the same privileges? [This is Butler, improved in the statement.]

Appendix III. gives some farther considerations with regard to JUSTICE. The point of the discussion is to show that Justice differs from Generosity or Beneficence in a regard to distant consequences, and to General Rules. The theme is handled in the author's usual happy style, but contains nothing special to him. He omits to state what is also a prime attribute of Justice, its being indispensable to the very existence of society, which cannot be said of generosity apart from its contributing to justice.

Appendix IV. is on some VERBAL DISPUTES. He remarks that, neither in English nor in any other modern tongue, is the boundary fixed between virtues and talents, vices and defects; that praise is given to natural endowments, as well as to voluntary exertions. The epithets intellectual and moral do not precisely divide the virtues; neither does the contrast of head and heart; many virtuous qualities partake of both ingredients. So the sentiment of conscious worth, or of its opposite, is affected by what is not in our power, as well as by what is; by the goodness or badness of our memory, as well as by continence or dissoluteness of conduct. Without endowments of the understanding, the best intentions will not procure esteem.

The ancient moralists included in the virtues what are obviously natural endowments. Prudence, according to Cicero, involved sagacity or powers of judgment. In Aristotle, we find, among the virtues, Courage, Temperance, Magnanimity, Modesty, Prudence, and manly Openness, as well as Justice and Friendship. Epictetus puts people on their guard against humanity and compassion. In general, the difference of voluntary and involuntary was little regarded in ancient ethics. This is changed in modern times, by the alliance of Ethics with Theology. The divine has put all morality on the footing of the civil law, and guarded it by the same sanctions of reward and punishment; and consequently must make the distinction of voluntary and involuntary fundamental.