Sympathy.—Adam Smith, in his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," has proposed a view which falls properly under the general theory of association, and may be regarded as a modification of it. He attributes our moral perceptions to the feeling of sympathy. To adopt the feelings of another is to approve them. If those feelings are such as would naturally be awakened in us by the same objects, we approve them as morally proper. Sympathy with the gratitude of one who has received a favor, leads us to regard the benefaction as meritorious. Sympathy with the resentment of an injured man, leads us to regard the injurer as worthy of punishment, and so the sense of demerit originates; sympathy with the feelings of others respecting our own conduct gives rise to self-approval and sense of duty. Rules of morality are merely a summary of these sentiments.
This View not sustained by Consciousness.—Whatever credit may be due to this ingenious writer, for calling attention to a principle which had not been sufficiently taken into account by preceding philosophers, we cannot but regard it as an insufficient explanation of the present case. In the first place, we are not conscious of the element of sympathy in the decisions and perceptions of the moral faculty. We look at a given action of right or wrong, and approve of it, or condemn it on that ground, because it is right or wrong, not because we sympathize with the feelings awakened by the act in the minds of others. If the process now supposed intervened between our knowledge of the act, and our judgment of its morality, we should know it and recognize it as a distinct element.
No imperative Character.—Furthermore, sympathy, like other emotions, has no imperative character, and, even if it might be supposed to suggest to the mind some idea of moral distinctions, cannot of itself furnish a foundation for those feelings of obligation which accompany and characterize the decisions of the moral faculty.
The Standard of Right.—But more than this, the view now taken makes the standard of right and wrong variable, and dependent on the feelings of men. We must know how others think and feel, how the thing affects them, before we can know whether a given act is right or wrong, to be performed or avoided. And then, furthermore, our feelings must agree with theirs; there must be sympathy and harmony of views and feelings, else the result will not follow. If any thing prevents us from knowing what are the feelings of others with respect to a given course of conduct, or if for any reason we fail to sympathize with those feelings, we can have no conscience in the matter. As those feelings vary, so will our moral perceptions vary. We have no fixed standard. There is no place left for right, as such, and absolutely. If no sympathy, then no duty, no right, no morality.
Result of the preceding Inquiries.—We have, as yet, found no satisfactory explanation of the origin of our moral ideas and perceptions. They seem not to be the result of education and imitation, nor yet of legal enactment. They seem to be natural, rather than artificial and acquired. Yet we cannot trace them to the action of the sensitive part of our nature. They are not the product of a special sense, nor yet of the combined and associated action of certain natural emotions, much less of any one emotion, as sympathy. And yet they are a part of our nature. Place man where you will, surround him with what influences you will, you still find in him, to some extent at least, indications of a moral nature; a nature modified, indeed, by circumstances, but never wholly obliterated. Evidently we must refer the ideas in question, then, to the intellectual, since they do not belong to the sensitive part of our nature.
5. Judgment.—Are they then the product and operation of the faculty of judgment? But the judgment does not originate ideas. It compares, distributes, estimates, decides to what class and category a thing belongs, but creates nothing. I have in mind the idea of a triangle, a circle, etc. So soon as certain figures are presented to the eye, I refer them at once, by an act of judgment, to the class to which they belong. I affirm that to be a triangle, this, a circle, etc.; the judgment does this. But judgment does not furnish my mind with the primary idea of a circle, etc. It deals with this idea already in the mind. So in our judgment of the beauty and deformity of objects. The perception that a landscape or painting is beautiful, is, in one sense, an act of judgment; but it is an act which presupposes the idea of the beautiful already in the mind that so judges. So also of moral distinctions. Whence comes the idea of right and wrong which lies at the foundation of every particular judgment as to the moral character of actions? This is the question before us, still unanswered; and to this there remains but one reply.
6. These Ideas intuitive.—The ideas in question are intuitive; suggestions or perceptions of reason. The view now proposed may be thus stated: It is the office of reason to discern the right and the wrong, as well as the true and the false, the beautiful and the reverse. Regarded subjectively, as conceptions of the human mind, right and wrong, as well as beauty and its opposite, truth and its opposite, are simple ideas, incapable of analysis or definition; intuitions of reason. Regarded as objective, right and wrong are realities, qualities absolute, and inherent in the nature of things, not fictitious, not the play of human fancy or human feeling, not relative merely to the human mind, but independent, essential, universal, absolute. As such, reason recognizes their existence. Judgment decides that such and such actions do possess the one or the other of these qualities; are right or wrong actions. There follows the sense of obligation to do or not to do, and the consciousness of merit or demerit as we comply, or fail to comply, with the same. In view of these perceptions emotions arise, but only as based upon them. The emotions do not, as the sentimental school affirm, originate the idea, the perception; but the idea, the perception, gives rise to the emotion. We are so constituted as to feel certain emotions in view of the moral quality of actions, but the idea and perception of that moral quality must precede, and it is the office of reason to produce this.
First Truths.—There are certain simple ideas which must be regarded as first truths, or first principles, of the human understanding, essential to its operations, ideas universal, absolute, necessary. Such are the ideas of personal existence, and identity, of time and space, as conditions of material existence; of number, cause, and mathematical relation. Into this class fall the ideas of the true, the beautiful, the right, and their opposites. The fundamental maxims of reasoning and morals find here their place.
How awakened.—These are, in a sense, intuitive perceptions; not strictly innate, yet connate; the foundation for them being laid in our nature and constitution. So soon as the mind reaches a certain stage of development they present themselves. Circumstances may promote or retard their appearance. They depend on opportunity to furnish the occasion of their springing up, yet they are, nevertheless, the natural, spontaneous development of the human soul, as really a part of our nature as are any of our instinctive impulses, or our mental attributes. They are a part of that native intelligence with which we are endowed by the author of our being. These intuitions of ours, are not themselves the foundation of right and wrong; they do not make one thing right and another wrong; but they are simply the reason why we so regard them. Such we believe to be the true account of the origin of our moral perceptions.
§ II.—Cognizance of the Right.