On the whole, then, I conclude (1) that while many actions are commonly judged to be made better or worse by the presence or absence of certain motives, our judgments of right and wrong strictly speaking relate to intentions, as distinguished from motives;[158] and (2) that while intentions affecting the agent’s own feelings and character are morally prescribed no less than intentions to produce certain external effects, still, the latter form the primary—though not the sole—content of the main prescriptions of duty, as commonly affirmed and understood: but the extent to which this is the case, will become more clear as we proceed.
It has indeed been maintained by moralists of influence that the moral value of our conduct depends upon the degree to which we are actuated by the one motive which they regard as truly moral: viz. the desire or free choice[159] of doing what is right as such, realising duty or virtue for duty or virtue’s sake:[160] and that a perfectly good act must be done entirely from this motive. I think, however, that it is difficult to combine this view—which I may conveniently distinguish as Stoical—with the belief, which modern orthodox moralists have usually been concerned to maintain, that it is always a man’s true interest to act virtuously. I do not mean that a man who holds this belief must necessarily be an egoist: but it seems to me impossible for him to exclude from his motives a regard for his own interest, while yet believing that it will be promoted by the act which he is willing. If, therefore, we hold that this self-regard impairs the moral value of an act otherwise virtuous, and at the same time hold that virtue is always conducive to the virtuous agent’s interest, we seem driven to the conclusion that knowledge of the true relation between virtue and happiness is an insuperable obstacle to the attainment of moral perfection. I cannot accept this paradox: and in subsequent chapters I shall try to show that the Stoical view of moral goodness is not on the whole sustained by a comprehensive survey and comparison of common moral judgments: since in some cases acts appear to have the quality of virtue even more strikingly when performed from some motive other than the love of virtue as such. For the present I wish rather to point out that the doctrine above stated is diametrically opposed to the view that the universal or normal motives of human action are either particular desires of pleasure or aversions to pain for the agent himself, or the more general regard to his happiness on the whole which I term Self-love; that it also excludes the less extreme doctrine that duties may be to some extent properly done from such self-regarding motives; and that one or other of these positions has frequently been held by writers who have expressly adopted an Intuitional method of Ethics. For instance, we find Locke laying down, without reserve or qualification, that “good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us:”[161] so that “it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of man, without annexing it to some reward or punishment to determine his will.” On the other hand, he expresses, with no less emphasis, the conviction that “from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out,”[162] so that “morality might be placed among the sciences capable of demonstration.” The combination of these two doctrines gives us the view that moral rules are essentially laws of God, which men are impelled to obey, solely or mainly, from fear or hope of divine punishments or rewards; and some such view as this seems to be widely accepted, by plain men without very refined moral sensibilities.
As an example, again, of thinkers who, while recognising in human nature a disinterested regard for duty or virtue as such, still consider that self-love is a proper and legitimate motive to right conduct, we may refer to Butler and his disciples. Butler regards “reasonable self-love” as not merely a normal motive to human action, but as being—no less than conscience—a “chief or superior principle in the nature of man”; so that an action “becomes unsuitable” to this nature, if the principle of self-love be violated. Accordingly the aim of his teaching is not to induce men to choose duty rather than interest, but to convince them that there is no inconsistency between the two; that self-love and conscience lead “to one and the same course of life.”
This intermediate doctrine appears to me to be more in harmony with the common sense of mankind on the whole than either of the extreme views before contrasted. But I do not conceive that any one of the three positions is inconsistent with fundamental assumptions of the Intuitional method. Even those who hold that human beings cannot reasonably be expected to conform to moral rules disinterestedly, or from any other motive than that supplied by the sanctions divinely attached to them, still commonly conceive God as supreme Reason, whose laws must be essentially reasonable: and so far as such laws are held to be cognisable by the ‘light of nature’—so that morality, as Locke says, may be placed among demonstrative sciences—the method of determining them will be none the less intuitional because it is combined with the belief that God will reward their observance and punish their violation. On the other hand those who hold that regard for duty as duty is an indispensable condition of acting rightly, would generally admit that acting rightly is not adequately defined as acting from a pure desire to act rightly; that though, in a certain sense, a man who sincerely desires and intends to act rightly does all he can, and completely fulfils duty, still such a man may have a wrong judgment as to the particulars of his duty, and therefore, in another sense, may act wrongly. If this be admitted, it is evident that, even on the view that the desire or resolution to fulfil duty as such is essential to right action, a distinction between two kinds of rightness is required; which we may express by saying that an act is—on this view—“formally”[163] right, if the agent in willing is moved by pure desire to fulfil duty or chooses duty for duty’s sake; “materially” right, if he intends the right particular effects. This distinction being taken, it becomes plain that there is no reason why the same principles and method for determining material rightness, or rightness of particular effects, should not be adopted by thinkers who differ most widely on the question of formal rightness; and it is, obviously, with material rightness that the work of the systematic moralist is mainly concerned.
§ 3. The term ‘formal rightness,’ as above used, implying a desire or choice of the act as right, implies also a belief that it is so. But the latter condition may exist without the former: I cannot perform an act from pure love of duty without believing it to be right: but I can believe it to be right and yet do it from some other motive. And there seems to be more agreement among moralists who adopt the Intuitional Method as to the moral indispensability of such a belief, than we have found with respect to the question of motive: at least, it would, I conceive, be universally held that no act can be absolutely right, whatever its external aspect and relations, which is believed by the agent to be wrong.[164] Such an act we may call “subjectively” wrong, even though “objectively” right. It may still be asked whether it is better in any particular case that a man should do what he mistakenly believes to be his duty, or what really is his duty in the particular circumstances—considered apart from his mistaken belief—and would be completely right if he could only think so. The question is rather subtle and perplexing to Common Sense: it is therefore worth while to point out that it can have only a limited and subordinate practical application. For no one, in considering what he ought himself to do in any particular case, can distinguish what he believes to be right from what really is so: the necessity for a practical choice between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ rightness can only present itself in respect of the conduct of another person whom it is in our power to influence. If another is about to do what we think wrong while he thinks it right, and we cannot alter his belief but can bring other motives to bear on him that may overbalance his sense of duty, it becomes necessary to decide whether we ought thus to tempt him to realise what we believe to be objectively right against his own convictions. I think that the moral sense of mankind would pronounce against such temptation,—thus regarding the Subjective rightness of an action as more important than the Objective,—unless the evil of the act prompted by a mistaken sense of duty appeared to be very grave.[165] But however essential it may be that a moral agent should do what he believes to be right, this condition of right conduct is too simple to admit of systematic development: it is, therefore, clear that the details of our investigation must relate mainly to ‘objective’ rightness.
There is, however, one practical rule of some value, to be obtained by merely reflecting on the general notion of rightness,[166] as commonly conceived. In a previous chapter[167] I endeavoured to make this notion clearer by saying that ‘what I judge to be right must, unless I am in error, be judged to be so by all rational beings who judge truly of the matter.’ This statement does not imply that what is judged to be right for one man must necessarily be judged so for another: ‘objective’ rightness may vary from A to B no less than the ‘objective’ facts of their nature and circumstances vary. There seems, however, to be this difference between our conceptions of ethical and physical objectivity respectively: that we commonly refuse to admit in the case of the former—what experience compels us to admit as regards the latter—variations for which we can discover no rational explanation. In the variety of coexistent physical facts we find an accidental or arbitrary element in which we have to acquiesce, as we cannot conceive it to be excluded by any extension of our knowledge of physical causation. If we ask, for example, why any portion of space empirically known to us contains more matter than any similar adjacent portion, physical science can only answer by stating (along with certain laws of change) some antecedent position of the parts of matter which needs explanation no less than the present; and however far back we carry our ascertainment of such antecedent positions, the one with which we leave off seems as arbitrary as that with which we started. But within the range of our cognitions of right and wrong, it will be generally agreed that we cannot admit a similar unexplained variation. We cannot judge an action to be right for A and wrong for B, unless we can find in the natures or circumstances of the two some difference which we can regard as a reasonable ground for difference in their duties. If therefore I judge any action to be right for myself, I implicitly judge it to be right for any other person whose nature and circumstances do not differ from my own in some important respects. Now by making this latter judgment explicit, we may protect ourselves against the danger which besets the conscience, of being warped and perverted by strong desire, so that we too easily think that we ought to do what we very much wish to do. For if we ask ourselves whether we believe that any similar person in similar circumstances ought to perform the contemplated action, the question will often disperse the false appearance of rightness which our strong inclination has given to it. We see that we should not think it right for another, and therefore that it cannot be right for us. Indeed this test of the rightness of our volitions is so generally effective, that Kant seems to have held that all particular rules of duty can be deduced from the one fundamental rule “Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.”[168] But this appears to me an error analogous to that of supposing that Formal Logic supplies a complete criterion of truth. I should agree that a volition which does not stand this test[169] is to be condemned; but I hold that a volition which does stand it may after all be wrong. For I conceive that all (or almost all) persons who act conscientiously could sincerely will the maxims on which they act to be universally adopted: while at the same time we continually find such persons in thoroughly conscientious disagreement as to what each ought to do in a given set of circumstances. Under these circumstances, to say that all such persons act rightly—in the objective sense—because their maxims all conform to Kant’s fundamental rule, would obliterate altogether the distinction between subjective and objective rightness; it would amount to affirming that whatever any one thinks right is so, unless he is in error as to the facts of the case to which his judgment applies. But such an affirmation is in flagrant conflict with common sense; and would render the construction of a scientific code of morality futile: as the very object of such a code is to supply a standard for rectifying men’s divergent opinions.
We may conclude then that the moral judgments which the present method attempts to systematise are primarily and for the most part intuitions of the rightness or goodness (or the reverse) of particular kinds of external effects of human volition, presumed to be intended by the agent, but considered independently of the agent’s own view as to the rightness or wrongness of his intention; though the quality of motives, as distinct from intentions, has also to be taken into account.
§ 4. But the question may be raised, whether it is legitimate to take for granted (as I have hitherto been doing) the existence of such intuitions? And, no doubt, there are persons who deliberately deny that reflection enables them to discover any such phenomenon in their conscious experience as the judgment or apparent perception that an act is in itself right or good, in any other sense than that of being the right or fit means to the attainment of some ulterior end. I think, however, that such denials are commonly recognised as paradoxical, and opposed to the common experience of civilised men:—at any rate if the psychological question, as to the existence of such moral judgments or apparent perceptions of moral qualities, is carefully distinguished from the ethical question as to their validity, and from what we may call the ‘psychogonical’ question as to their origin. The first and second of these questions are sometimes confounded, owing to an ambiguity in the use of the term “intuition”; which has sometimes been understood to imply that the judgment or apparent perception so designated is true. I wish therefore to say expressly, that by calling any affirmation as to the rightness or wrongness of actions “intuitive,” I do not mean to prejudge the question as to its ultimate validity, when philosophically considered: I only mean that its truth is apparently known immediately, and not as the result of reasoning. I admit the possibility that any such “intuition” may turn out to have an element of error, which subsequent reflection and comparison may enable us to correct; just as many apparent perceptions through the organ of vision are found to be partially illusory and misleading: indeed the sequel will show that I hold this to be to an important extent the case with moral intuitions commonly so called.
The question as to the validity of moral intuitions being thus separated from the simple question ‘whether they actually exist,’ it becomes obvious that the latter can only be decided for each person by direct introspection or reflection. It must not therefore be supposed that its decision is a simple matter, introspection being always infallible: on the contrary, experience leads me to regard men as often liable to confound with moral intuitions other states or acts of mind essentially different from them,—blind impulses to certain kinds of action or vague sentiments of preference for them, or conclusions from rapid and half-unconscious processes of reasoning, or current opinions to which familiarity has given an illusory air of self-evidence. But any errors of this kind, due to careless or superficial reflection, can only be cured by more careful reflection. This may indeed be much aided by communication with other minds; it may also be aided, in a subordinate way, by an inquiry into the antecedents of the apparent intuition, which may suggest to the reflective mind sources of error to which a superficial view of it is liable. Still the question whether a certain judgment presents itself to the reflective mind as intuitively known cannot be decided by any inquiry into its antecedents or causes.[170]
It is, however, still possible to hold that an inquiry into the Origin of moral intuitions must be decisive in determining their Validity. And in fact it has been often assumed, both by Intuitionists and their opponents, that if our moral faculty can be shown to be ‘derived’ or ‘developed’ out of other pre-existent elements of mind or consciousness, a reason is thereby given for distrusting it; while if, on the other hand, it can be shown to have existed in the human mind from its origin, its trustworthiness is thereby established. Either assumption appears to me devoid of foundation. On the one hand, I can see no ground for supposing that a faculty thus derived, is, as such, more liable to error than if its existence in the individual possessing it had been differently caused:[171] to put it otherwise, I cannot see how the mere ascertainment that certain apparently self-evident judgments have been caused in known and determinate ways, can be in itself a valid ground for distrusting this class of apparent cognitions. I cannot even admit that those who affirm the truth of such judgments are bound to show in their causes a tendency to make them true: indeed the acceptance of any such onus probandi would seem to me to render the attainment of philosophical certitude impossible. For the premises of the required demonstration must consist of caused beliefs, which as having been caused will equally stand in need of being proved true, and so on ad infinitum: unless it be held that we can find among the premises of our reasonings certain apparently self-evident judgments which have had no antecedent causes, and that these are therefore to be accepted as valid without proof. But such an assertion would be an extravagant paradox: and, if it be admitted that all beliefs are equally in the position of being effects of antecedent causes, it seems evident that this characteristic alone cannot serve to invalidate any of them.