A Manual of Moral Philosophy

by Andrew P. Peabody

The appetites, desires, and affections are, as has been said, the proximate motives of action. The perception of expediency and the sense of right act, not independently of these motives, but upon them and through them, checking some, stimulating others. Thus they, both, restrain the appetites, the former, so far as prudence requires; the latter, in subserviency to the more noble elements of character. The former directs the desires toward worthy, but earthly objects; the latter works most efficiently through the benevolent affections, as exercised toward God and man.

Exterior motives are of a secondary order, acting not directly upon the will, but influencing it indirectly, through the springs of action, or through the principles which direct and govern them.

The action of exterior motives takes place in three different ways. 1. When they are in harmony with any predominant appetite, desire, or affection, they at once intensify it, and prompt acts by which it may be gratified. Thus, for instance, a sumptuously spread table gives the epicure a keener appetite, and invites him to its free indulgence. The [pg 080] opportunity of a potentially lucrative, though hazardous investment, excites the cupidity of the man who prizes money above all things else, and tempts him to incur the doubtful risk. The presence of the object of love or hatred adds strength to the affection, and induces expressions or acts of kindness or malevolence. 2. An exterior motive opposed to the predominant spring of action often starts that spring into vigorous and decisive activity, and makes it thenceforth stronger and more imperative. It is thus that remonstrances, obstacles, and interposing difficulties not infrequently render sensual passion more rabid; while temptation, by the acts of resistance which it elicits, nourishes the virtue it assails. 3. An exterior motive may have a sufficient stress and cogency to call forth into energetic action some appetite, desire, or affection previously dormant or feeble, thus to repress the activity of those which before held sway, and so to produce a fundamental change in the character. In this way the sudden presentation of vice, in attractive forms, may give paramount sway to passions which had previously shown no signs of mastery; and, in like manner, a signal experience of peril, calamity, deliverance, or unexpected joy may call forth the religious affections, and invest them with enduring supremacy over a soul previously surrendered to appetite, inferior desires, or meaner loves.

An undue influence in the formation or change of character is often ascribed to exterior motives. They are oftener the consequence than the cause of [pg 081] character. Men, in general, exercise more power over their surroundings, than their surroundings over them. A very large proportion of the circumstances which seem to have a decisive influence upon us, are of our own choice, and we might—had we so willed—have chosen their opposites. A virtuous person seldom finds it necessary to breathe a vicious atmosphere. A willingness to be tempted is commonly the antecedent condition to one's being led into temptation. Sympathy, example, and social influences are second in their power, whether for good or for evil, to no other class of exterior motives; and there are few who cannot choose their own society, and who do not choose it in accordance with their elective affinities. It is true, indeed, that the choice of companions of doubtful virtue is often the first outward sign of vicious proclivities; while a tenacious adherence to the society of the most worthy not infrequently precedes any very conspicuous development of personal excellence; but in either case the choice of friends indicates the predominant springs of action, and the direction in which the character has begun to grow. So far then is man from being under the irresistible control of motives from without, that these motives are in great part the results and the tokens of his own voluntary agency.

Christianity justly claims preëminence, not only as a source of knowledge as to the right, but equally as presenting the most influential and persistent motives to right conduct. These motives we have in [pg 082] its endearing and winning manifestation of the Divine fatherhood by Jesus Christ; in his own sacrifice, death, and undying love for man; in the assurance of forgiveness for past wrongs and omissions, without which there could be little courage for future well-doing; in the promise of Divine aid in every right purpose and worthy endeavor; in the certainty of a righteous retribution in the life to come; and in institutions and observances designed and adapted to perpetuate the memory of the salient facts, and to renew at frequent intervals the recognition of the essential truths, which give the religion its name and character. The desires and affections, stimulated and directed by these motives, are incapable of being perverted to evil, while desires with lower aims and affections for inferior objects are always liable to be thus perverted. These religious motives, too, resting on the Infinite and the Eternal, are of inexhaustible power; if felt at all, they must of necessity be felt more strongly than all other motives; and they cannot fail to be adequate to any stress of need, temptation, or trial.

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Passion implies a passive state,—a condition in which the will yields without resistance to some dominant appetite, desire, or affection, under whose imperious reign reason is silenced, considerations of expediency and of right suppressed, and exterior counteracting motives neutralized. It resembles insanity in the degree in which the actions induced by [pg 083] it are the results of unreasoning impulse, and in the unreal and distorted views which it presents of persons, objects, and events. It differs from insanity, mainly in its being a self-induced madness, for which, as for drunkenness, the sufferer is morally accountable, and in yielding to which, as in drunkenness, he, by suffering his will to pass beyond the control of reason, makes himself responsible, both legally and morally, for whatever crimes or wrongs he commits in this state of mental alienation.

There is no appetite, desire, or affection which may not become a passion, and there is no passion which does not impair the sense of right, and interfere with the discharge of duty. The appetites, the lower desires, the malevolent affections, and, not infrequently, love, when they become passions, have their issues in vice and crime. The nobler desires and affections when made passions, may not lead to positive evil, but can hardly fail to derange the fitting order of life, and to result in the dereliction of some of its essential duties. Thus, the passion for knowledge may render one indifferent to his social and religious obligations. Philanthropy, when a passion, overlooks nearer for more remote claims of duty, and is very prone to omit self-discipline and self-culture in its zeal for world-embracing charities. Even the religious affections, when they assume the character of passions, either, on the one hand, are kindled into wild fanaticism, or, on the other, lapse into a self-absorbed quietism, which forgets outside duties in the luxury of [pg 084] devout contemplation; and though either of these is to be immeasurably preferred to indifference, they both are as immeasurably inferior to that piety, equally fervent and rational, which neglects neither man for God, nor God for man, and which remains mindful of all human and earthly relations, fitnesses, and duties, while at the same time it retains its hold of faith, hope, and habitual communion, on the higher life.

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Habit also involves the suspension of reason and motive in the performance of individual acts; but it differs from passion in that its acts were in the beginning prompted by reason and motive. Indeed, it may be plausibly maintained that in each habitual act there is a virtual remembrance—a recollection too transient to be itself remembered—of the reasoning or motive which induced the first act of the series. In some cases the habitual act is performed, as it is said, unconsciously, certainly with a consciousness so evanescent as to leave no trace of itself. In other cases the act is performed consciously, but as by a felt necessity, in consequence of an uneasy sensation—analogous to hunger and thirst—which can be allayed in this way only. Under this last head we may class, in the first place, habits of criminal indulgence, including the indulgence of morbid and depraved appetite; secondly, many of those morally indifferent habits, which constitute a large portion of a regular and systematic life; and thirdly, habits of virtuous conduct, of industry, of punctuality, of charity.