Chapter VIII. treats of Intention as an element in virtuous action. He makes a distinction between Virtue in the Abstract and Virtue in Practice, or with reference to all the circumstances of the agent. A man may do abstract wrong, through mistake, while as he acts with his best judgment and with upright intentions, he is practically right. He grounds on this a powerful appeal against every attempt at dominion over conscience. The requisites of Practical Morality are (1) Liberty, or Free-will, on which he takes the side of free-agency. (2) Intelligence, without which there can be no perception of good and evil, and no moral agency. (3) The Consciousness of Rectitude, or Righteous Intention. On this he dwells at some length. No action is properly the action of a moral agent unless designed by him. A virtuous motive is essential to virtue. On the question—Is Benevolence a virtuous motive? he replies: Not the Instinctive benevolence of the parent, but only Rational benevolence; which he allows to coincide with rectitude. Reason presiding over Self-love renders it a virtuous principle likewise. The presence of Reason in greater or less degree is the criterion of the greater or less virtue of any action.
Chapter IX. is on the different Degrees of Virtue and Vice, and the modes of estimating them; the Difficulties attending the Practice of Virtue; the use of Trials, and the essentials of a good or a bad Character. The considerations adduced are a number of perfectly well-known maxims on the practice of morality, and scarcely add anything to the elucidation of the author's Moral Theory. The concluding chapter, on Natural Religion, contains nothing original.
To sum up the views of Price:—
I.—As regards the Moral Standard, he asserts that a perception of the Reason or the Understanding,—a sense of fitness or congruity between actions and the agents, and all the circumstances attending them,—is what determines Right and Wrong.
He finds it impracticable to maintain his position without sundry qualifications, as we have seen. Virtue is naturally adapted to please every observing mind; vice the contrary. Right actions must be grateful, wrong ungrateful to us. To behold virtue is to admire her. In contemplating the actions of moral agents, we have both a perception of the understanding and a feeling of the heart. He thus re-admits an element of feeling, along with the intellect, in some undefined degree; contending only that all morality is not to be resolved into feeling or instinct. We have also noticed another singular admission, to the effect that only superior natures can discover virtue by the understanding. Reason alone, did we possess it in a high degree, would answer all the ends of the passions. Parental affection would be unnecessary, if parents were sufficiently alive to the reasons of supporting the young, and were virtuous enough to be always determined by them.
Utility, although not the sole ground of Justice, is yet admitted to be one important reason or ground of many of its maxims.
II.—The nature of the Moral Faculty, in Price's theory, is not a separate question from the standard, but the same question. His discussion takes the form of an enquiry into the Faculty:—'What is the power within us that perceives the distinctions of Right and Wrong?' The two questions are mixed up throughout, to the detriment of precision in the reasoning.
With his usual facility of making concessions to other principles, he says it is not easy to determine how far our natural sentiments may be altered by custom, education, and example: while it would be unreasonable to conclude that all is derived from these sources. That part of our moral constitution depending on instinct is liable to be corrupted by custom and education to almost any length; but the most depraved can never sink so low as to lose all moral discernment, all ideas of just and unjust; of which he offers the singular proof that men are never wanting in resentment when they are themselves the objects of ill-treatment.
As regards the Psychology of Disinterested Action, he provides nothing but a repetition of Butler (Chapter III.) and a vague assertion of the absurdity of denying disinterested benevolence.
III.—On Human Happiness, he has only a few general remarks. Happiness is an object of essential and eternal value. Happiness is the end, and the only end, conceivable by us, of God's providence and government; but He pursues this end in subordination to rectitude. Virtue tends to happiness, but does not always secure it. A person that sacrifices his life rather than violate his conscience, or betray his country, gives up all possibility of any present reward, and loses the more in proportion as his virtue is more glorious.