[44] It should be observed that Austin, after Bentham, more frequently uses the term “moral” to connote what he more distinctly calls “positive morality,” the code of rules supported by common opinion in any society.
[45] In the before-mentioned dissertation. Cf. note 2 to p. 835. Hartley refers to this treatise as having supplied the starting-point for his own system.
[46] It should be noticed that Hartley’s sensationalism is far from leading him to exalt the corporeal pleasures. On the contrary, he tries to prove elaborately that they (as well as the pleasures of imagination, ambition, self-interest) cannot be made an object of primary pursuit without a loss of happiness on the whole—one of his arguments being that these pleasures occur earlier in time, and “that which is prior in the order of nature is always less perfect than that which is posterior.”
[47] It may be observed that in the view of Kant and others (2) and (3) are somewhat confusingly blended.
[48] Singularly enough, the English writer who approaches most nearly to Kant on this point is the utilitarian Godwin, in his Political Justice. In Godwin’s view, reason is the proper motive to acts conducive to general happiness: reason shows me that the happiness of a number of other men is of more value than my own; and the perception of this truth affords me at least some inducement to prefer the former to the latter. And supposing it to be replied that the motive is really the moral uneasiness involved in choosing the selfish alternative, Godwin answers that this uneasiness, though a “constant step” in the process of volition, is a merely “accidental” step—“I feel pain in the neglect of an act of benevolence, because benevolence is judged by me to be conduct which it becomes me to adopt.”
[49] In Kantism, as we have partly seen, the most important ontological beliefs—in God, freedom and immortality of the soul—are based on necessities of ethical thought. In Fichte’s system the connexion of ethics and metaphysics is still more intimate; indeed, we may compare it in this respect to Platonism; as Plato blends the most fundamental notions of each of these studies in the one idea of good, so Fichte blends them in the one idea free-will. “Freedom,” in his view, is at once the foundation of all being and the end of all moral action. In the systems of Schelling and Hegel ethics falls again into a subordinate place; indeed, the ethical view of the former is rather suggested than completely developed. Neither Fichte nor Schelling has exercised more than the faintest and most indirect influence on ethical philosophy in England; it therefore seems best to leave the ethical doctrines of each to be explained in connexion with the rest of his system.
[50] Cf. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, The Philosophical Radicals. Martineau’s Philosophy, p. 92.