The author seems to think that the difference here pointed out, is explained by the fact that the moral sentiment is in the one case needed, in the other not needed, for producing the useful or averting the hurtful act; that, in short, we are 323 made to have the feeling, by a foresight that our having it will operate usefully on the conduct of our fellow-creatures. I cannot accept this explanation. It seems to me to explain everything about the usual feelings, except the feelings themselves. It explains praise and blame, because these may be administered with the express design of influencing conduct. It explains reward and punishment, and every other distinction which we make in our behaviour between what we desire to encourage, and what we are anxious to check. But these things we might do from a deliberate policy, without having any moral feeling in our minds at all. When there is a moral feeling in our minds, our praise or blame is usually the simple expression of that feeling, rather than an instrument purposely employed for an end. We may give expression to the feeling without really having it, in the belief that our praise or blame will have a salutary effect; but no anticipation of salutary effects from our feeling will ever avail to give us the feeling itself: except indeed, what may be said of every other mental feeling—that we may talk ourselves into it; that the habitual use of the modes of speech that are associated with it, has some tendency to call up the feeling in the speaker himself, and a great tendency to engender it in other people.
I apprehend, however, that there is another, and more adequate reason why the feeling of moral approbation is usually absent in the case of actions (or forbearances) for which there are sufficient motives without it. These actions are done, and are seen to be done, by everybody alike. The pleasant associations derived from their usefulness merge, therefore, in our feelings towards human life and towards our fellow-creatures generally, and do not give rise to any special association of pleasure with given individuals. But when we find that a certain person does beneficial acts which the general experience of life did not warrant us in counting upon—acts which would not have been done by everybody, or even by most people, in his place; we associate the pleasure which the benefit gives us, with the character and disposition of that individual, and with the act, conceived as proceeding 324 from that specially beneficent disposition. And obversely, if a person acts in a manner from which we suffer, but which is such as we should expect from most other people in a parallel case, the associations which his acts create in our minds are associations with human life, or with mankind in general; but if the acts, besides being of a hurtful kind, betoken a disposition in the agent, more hurtful than we are accustomed to look for in average men, we associate the injury with that very man, and with that very disposition, and have the feeling of moral disapprobation and repugnance.
There is, as already intimated, another condition which those who hold the Association theory of the moral sentiments are bound to fulfil. The class of feelings called moral embraces several varieties, materially different in their character. Wherever this difference manifests itself, the theory must be required to shew that there is a corresponding difference in the antecedents. If pleasurable or painful associations are the generating cause, those associations must differ in some proportion to the difference which exists in what they generate.
The principal case in point is the case of what is called Duty, or Obligation. It will probably be admitted that beneficial acts, when done because they are beneficial, excite in us favourable sentiments towards the agent, for which the utility or beneficial tendency of the actions is sufficient to account. But it is only some, not all, of these beneficial acts, that we regard as duties; as acts which the agent, or we ourselves if we are the persons concerned, are bound to do. This feeling of duty or obligation, it is contended, is a very different state of mind from mere liking for the action and good will to the agent. The association theory may account for the two last, but not for the former.
I have examined this question in the concluding chapter of a short treatise entitled “Utilitarianism.” The subject of the chapter is “the connexion between Justice and Utility.” I have there endeavoured to shew what the association is, which exists in the case of what we regard as a duty, but does not 325 exist in the case of what we merely regard as useful, and which gives to the feeling in the former case the strength, the gravity, and pungency, which in the other case it has not.
I believe that the element in the association, which gives this distinguishing character to the feeling, and which constitutes the difference of the antecedents in the two cases, is the idea of Punishment. I mean the association with punishment, not the expectation of it.
No case can be pointed out in which we consider anything as a duty, and any act or omission as immoral or wrong, without regarding the person who commits the wrong and violates the duty as a fit object of punishment. We think that the general good requires that he should be punished, if not by the law, by the displeasure and ill offices of his fellow-creatures: we at any rate feel indignant with him, that is, it would give us pleasure that he should suffer for his misconduct, even if there are preponderant reasons of another kind against inflicting the suffering. This feeling of indignation, or resentment, is, I conceive, a case of the animal impulse (I call it animal because it is common to us with the other animals) to defend our own life or possessions, or the persons whom we care for, against actual or threatened attack. All conduct which we class as wrong or criminal is, or we suppose it to be, an attack upon some vital interest of ourselves or of those we care for, (a category which may include the public, or the whole human race): conduct which, if allowed to be repeated, would destroy or impair the security and comfort of our lives. We are prompted to defend these paramount interests by repelling the attack, and guarding against its renewal; and our earliest experience gives us a feeling, which acts with the rapidity of an instinct, that the most direct and efficacious protection is retaliation. We are therefore prompted to retaliate by inflicting pain on the person who has inflicted or tried to inflict it upon ourselves. We endeavour, as far as possible, that our social institutions shall render us this service. We are gratified when, by that or other means, the pain is inflicted, and dissatisfied if from any cause it is not. This 326 strong association of the idea of punishment, and the desire for its infliction, with the idea of the act which has hurt us, is not in itself a moral sentiment; but it appears to me to be the element which is present when we have the feelings of obligation and of injury, and which mainly distinguishes them from simple distaste or dislike for any thing in the conduct of another that is disagreeable to us; that distinguishes, for instance, our feeling towards the person who steals our goods, from our feeling towards him who offends our senses by smoking tobacco. This impulse to self-defence by the retaliatory infliction of pain, only becomes a moral sentiment, when it is united with a conviction that the infliction of punishment in such a case is conformable to the general good, and when the impulse is not allowed to carry us beyond the point at which that conviction ends. For further illustration I must refer to the little Treatise already mentioned.—Ed.