Moral Science by Alexander Bain (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

apparatus, this is a doctrine in which I have no faith, and which I regard as altogether erroneous. It arises out of the disposition to attribute more to the natural man than properly belongs to him. The other error into which inquirers are apt to fall in making a discrimination between what man is by nature, and what he is by convention, is the opposite of the one just mentioned. They sometimes attribute to the natural man less than properly belongs to him. And this, I think, was the error into which the Sophists were betrayed. They fall into it inadvertently, and not with any design of embracing or promulgating erroneous opinions.'

2. With reference to SYMPATHY, he differs from Adam Smith's view, that it is a native and original affection of the heart, like hunger and thirst. Mere feeling, he contends, can never take a man out of self. It is thought that overleaps this boundary; not the _feeling_ of sensation, but the _thought_ of one's self and one's sensations, gives the ground and the condition of sympathy. Sympathy has self-consciousness for its foundation. Very young children have little sympathy, because in them the idea of self is but feebly developed.

3. In his chapter on the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools, he discusses at length the summum bonum, or Happiness, and, by implication, the Ethical end, or Standard. He considers that men have to keep in view _two_ ends; the one the maintenance of their own nature, as rational and thinking beings; the other their happiness or pleasure. He will not allow that we are to do right at all hazards, irrespective of utility; yet he considers that there is something defective in the scheme that sets aside virtue as the good, and enthrones happiness in its place. He sums up as follows:--

'We thus see that a complete body of ethics should embrace two codes, two systems of rules, the one of which we may call the fundamental or antecedent, or under-ground ethics, as underlying the other; and the other of which we may call the upper or subsequent, or above-ground ethics, as resting on, and modified by the former. The under-ground ethics would inculcate on man the necessity of being what he truly is, namely, a creature of reason and of thought; in short, the necessity of being a man, and of preserving to himself this status. Here the end is virtue, that is, the life and health of the soul, and nothing but this. The above-ground ethics would inculcate on man the necessity of being a _happy_ man.

It is not enough for man _to be_; he must, moreover, if possible, _be happy_. The fundamental ethics look merely to his being, _i.e._, his being rational; the upper ethics look principally to his being happy, but they are bound to take care that in all his happiness he does nothing to violate his rationality, the health and virtue of the soul.'


HENRY LONGUEVILLE/MANSEL.

Mr. Mansel, in his 'Metaphysics,' has examined the question of a moral standard, and the nature of the moral faculty, accepting, with slight and unimportant modifications, the current theory of a moral sense.

1. _The Moral Faculty_. That the conceptions of right and wrong are _sui generis_, is proved (1) by the fact that in all languages there are distinct terms for 'right' and 'agreeable;' (2) by the testimony of consciousness; and (3) by the mutual inconsistencies of the antagonists of a moral sense. The moral faculty is not identical with Reason; for the understanding contributes to truth only one of its elements, namely, the concept; in addition, the concept must agree with the fact as presented in intuition. The moral sense is usually supposed to involve the perception of qualities only in so far as they are _pleasing_ or _displeasing_. To this representation Mr. Mansel objects. In an act of moral consciousness two things are involved: a perception or judgment, and a sentiment or feeling. But the judgment itself may be farther divided into two parts: 'the one, an individual fact, presented now and here; the other, a general law, valid always and everywhere.' This is the distinction between _presentative_ and _representative_ Knowledge. In every act of consciousness there is some individual fact presented, and an operation of the understanding. 'A conscious act of pure moral sense, like a conscious act of pure physical sense, if it ever takes place at all, takes place at a time of which we have no remembrance, and of which we can give no account.' The intuitive element may be called _conscience_; the representing element is the _understanding_. On another point he differs from the ordinary theory. It is commonly said that we immediately perceive the moral character of acts, whether by ourselves or by others. But this would implicate two facts, neither of which we can be conscious of: (1) a law binding on a certain person, and (2) his conduct as agreeing or disagreeing with that law. Now, I can infer the existence of such a law only by _representing_ his mind as constituted like my own. We can, in fact, immediately perceive moral qualities only in our own actions.

2. _The Moral Standard_. This is treated as a branch of Ontology, and designated the 'Real in morality,' He declares that Kant's notion of an absolute moral law, binding by its inherent power over the mind, is a mere fiction. The difference between inclination and the moral imperative is merely a difference between lower and higher pleasure. The moral law can have no authority unless imposed by a superior, as a law emanating from a lawgiver. If man is not accountable to some higher being, there is no distinction between duty and pleasure. The standard of right and wrong is the moral _nature_ (not the arbitrary _will_) of God.[25] Now, as we cannot know God--an infinite being,--so we have but a relative conception of morality. We may have lower and higher ideas of duty. Morality therefore admits of progress. But no advance in morality contradicts the _principles_ previously acknowledged, however it may vary the acts whereby those principles are carried out. And each advance takes its place in the mind, not as a question to be supported by argument, but as an axiom to be intuitively admitted. Each principle appears true and irreversible so far as it goes, but it is liable to be merged in a more comprehensive formula. It is an error of philosophers to imagine that they have an absolute standard of morals, and thereupon to set out _a priori_ the criterion of a possibly true revelation. Kant said that the revealed commands of God could have no religious value, unless approved by the moral reason; and Fichte held that no true revelation could contain any intimation of future rewards and punishments, or any moral rule not deducible from the principles of the practical reason. But revelation has enlightened the practical reason, as by the maxim--to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself--a maxim, says Mr. Mansel, that philosophy in vain toiled after, and subsequently borrowed without acknowledgment.


JOHN STUART MILL.

Mr. J.S. Mill examines the basis of Ethics in a small work entitled Utilitarianism.

After a chapter of General Remarks, he proposes (Chapter II.) to enquire, What Utilitarianism is? This creed holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. The things included under pleasure and pain may require farther explanation; but this does not affect the general theory. To the accusation that pleasure is a mean and grovelling object of pursuit, the answer is, that human beings are capable of pleasures that are not grovelling. It is compatible with utility to recognize some _kinds_ of pleasure as more valuable than others. There are pleasures that, irrespective of amount, are held by all persons that have experienced them to be preferable to others. Few human beings would consent to become beasts, or fools, or base, in consideration of a greater allowance of pleasure. Inseparable from the estimate of pleasure is a _sense of dignity_, which determines a preference among enjoyments.

But this distinction in kind is not essential to the justification of the standard of Utility. That standard is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether. However little the higher virtues might contribute to one's own happiness, there can be no doubt that the world in general gains by them.

Another objection to the doctrine is, that happiness is a thing unattainable, and that no one has a _right_ to it. Not only can men do without happiness, but renunciation is the first condition of all nobleness of character.

In reply, the author remarks that, supposing happiness impossible, the prevention of unhappiness might still be an object, which is a mode of Utility. But the alleged impossibility of happiness is either a verbal quibble or an exaggeration. No one contends for a life of sustained rapture; occasional moments of such, in an existence of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a predominance of the active over the passive, and moderate expectations on the whole, constitute a life worthy to be called happiness. Numbers of mankind have been satisfied with much less. There are two great factors of enjoyment--tranquillity and excitement. With the one, little pleasure will suffice; with the other, considerable pain can be endured. It does not appear impossible to secure both in alternation. The principal defect in persons of fortunate lot is to care for nobody but themselves; this curtails the excitements of life, and makes everything dwindle as the end approaches. Another circumstance rendering life unsatisfactory is the want of mental cultivation, by which men are deprived of the inexhaustible pleasures of knowledge, not merely in the shape of science, but as practice and fine art. It is not at all difficult to indicate sources of happiness; the main stress of the problem lies in the contest with the positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and of mental suffering--indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection. Poverty and Disease may be contracted in dimensions; and even vicissitudes of fortune are not wholly beyond control.

It is unquestionably possible to do without happiness. This is the lot of the greater part of mankind, and is often voluntarily chosen by the hero or the martyr. But self-sacrifice is not its own end; it must be made to earn for others immunity from sacrifice. It must be a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that requires any one to serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of their own; yet undoubtedly while the world is in that imperfect state, the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue that can be found in man. Nay, farther, the conscious ability to do without happiness, in such a condition of the world, is the best prospect of realizing such happiness as is attainable. Meanwhile, self-devotion belongs as much to the Utilitarian as to the Stoic or the Transcendentalist; with the reservation that a sacrifice not tending to increase the sum of happiness is to be held as wasted. The golden rule, do as you would be done by, is the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. The means of approaching this ideal are, first, that laws and society should endeavour to place the interest of the individual in harmony with the interest of the whole; and, secondly, that education and opinion should establish in the mind of each individual an indissoluble association between his own good and the good of the whole.

The system of Utility is objected