[43] Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 1044.
[44] Stephen, op. cit. i. 58.
The more a moral judgment is influenced by reflection, the more it scrutinises the character which manifests itself in that individual piece of conduct by which the judgment is occasioned. But however superficial it be, it always refers to a will conceived of as a continuous entity, to a person regarded as a cause of pleasure or pain. This holds good of savage and civilised men alike. Even tame animals, in response to a hurt or a benefit, behave differently towards different persons according to their previous experience of the agent.
CHAPTER XIII
WHY MORAL JUDGMENTS ARE PASSED ON CONDUCT AND CHARACTER—MORAL VALUATION AND FREE-WILL
WE have examined the general nature of the subjects of moral judgments from an evolutionary point of view. We have seen that such judgments are essentially passed on conduct and character, and that allowance is made for the various elements of which conduct and character are composed in proportion as the moral judgment is scrutinising and enlightened. But an important question still calls for an answer, the question, Why is this so? We cannot content ourselves with the bare fact that nothing but the will is morally good or bad. We must try to explain it.
After what has been said above the explanation is not far to seek. Moral judgments are passed on conduct and character, because such judgments spring from moral emotions; because the moral emotions are retributive emotions; because a retributive emotion is a reactive attitude of mind, either kindly or hostile, towards a living being (or something looked upon in the light of a living being), regarded as a cause of pleasure or as a cause of pain; and because a living being is regarded as a true cause of pleasure or pain only in so far as this feeling is assumed to be caused by its will. The correctness of this explanation I consider to be proved by the fact that not only moral emotions, but non-moral retributive emotions as well, are felt with reference to phenomena exactly similar in nature to those on which moral judgments are passed.
Like moral indignation, the emotion of revenge can be felt only towards a sentient being, or towards something which is believed to be sentient. We may be angry with inanimate things for a moment, but such anger cannot last; it disappears as soon as we reflect that the thing in question is incapable of feeling pain. Even a dog which, in playing with another dog, hurts itself, for instance, by running into a tree, changes its angry attitude immediately it notices the real nature of that which caused it pain.[1]
[1] Hiram Stanley, Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling, p. 154 sq.
Equivalent to injuries resulting from inanimate things are injuries resulting accidentally from animate beings. If my arm or my foot gives a push to my neighbour, and he is convinced that the push was neither intended nor foreseen nor due to any carelessness whatever on my part, surely he cannot feel angry with me. Why not? Professor Bain answers this question as follows:—“Aware that absolute inviolability is impossible in this world, and that we are all exposed by turns to accidental injuries from our fellows, we have our minds disciplined to let unintended evil go by without satisfaction of inflicting some counter evil upon the offender.”[2] Perhaps another answer would be that an accidental injury in no way affects the “self-feeling” of the sufferer. But neither of these explanations goes to the root of the question. Let us once more remember that even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked; and this can neither be the result of discipline, nor have anything to do with the feeling of self-regarding pride.[3] The reason is that the dog scents an enemy in the person who kicks him, but not in the one who stumbles. My neighbour, more clearly still, makes a distinction between a part of my body and myself as a volitional being, and finds that I am no proper object of resentment when the cause of the hurt was merely my arm or my foot. An event is attributed to me as its cause only in proportion as it is considered to have been brought about by my will; and I, regarded as a volitional and sensitive entity, can be a proper object of resentment only as a cause of pain.