CHAPTER CCXXXIX.
THE DOCTOR DISSENTS FROM A PROPOSITION OF WARBURTON'S AND SHEWS IT TO BE FALLACIOUS.—HUTCHINSON'S REMARKS ON THE POWERS OF BRUTES.—LORD SHAFTESBURY QUOTED.—APOLLONIUS AND THE KING OF BABYLON.—DISTINCTION IN THE TALMUD BETWEEN AN INNOCENT BEAST AND A VICIOUS ONE.—OPINION OF ISAAC LA PEYRESC.—THE QUESTION DE ORIGINE ET NATURA ANIMARUM IN BRUTIS AS BROUGHT BEFORE THE THEOLOGIANS OF SEVEN PROTESTANT ACADEMIES IN THE YEAR 1635 BY DANIEL SENNERTUS.
Toutes veritez ne sont pas bonnes à dire serieusement.
GOMGAM.
Warburton has argued that “from the nature of any action morality cannot arise, nor from its effects;—not from the first, because being only reasonable or unreasonable, nothing follows but a fitness in doing one, and an absurdity in doing the other;—not from the second, because did the good or evil produced make the action moral, brutes from whose actions proceed both good and evil, would have morality.” But Warburton's proposition is fallacious, and his reasoning is inconclusive; there is an essential difference between right and wrong, upon which the moral law is founded; and in the reductio ad absurdum upon which he relies, there is no absurdity. The language of the people is sometimes true to nature and philosophy when that of the learned departs widely from the one, and is mistaken in the other. When we call a beast vicious, we mean strictly what the word implies; and if we never speak of one as virtuous, it is because man reserves the praise of virtue to his own kind. The word good supplies its place. A horse that has any vice in him is never called good.
“In this case alone it is,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “we call any creature worthy or virtuous, when it can have the notion of a public interest, and can attain the speculation or science of what is morally good or ill, admirable or blameable, right or wrong. For though we may vulgarly call a horse vicious, yet we never say of a good one, nor of any mere beast, idiot, or changeling, though ever so good-natured, that he is worthy or virtuous.
“So that if a creature be generous, kind, constant, compassionate, yet if he cannot reflect on what he himself does, or sees others do, so as to take notice of what is worthy or honest; and make that notice or conception of worth and honesty to be an object of his affection, he has not the character of being virtuous; for thus, and no otherwise, he is capable of having a sense of right and wrong; a sentiment or judgement of what is done through just, equal and good affection, or the contrary.”