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

with a deposit for another, and a struggle ensues between interest and probity as to whether I should pay it. If interest conquers, remorse ensues. He paints the state of remorse, and analyzes it into the same elements as before, the idea of _good_ and _evil_, of an _obligatory law_, of _liberty_, of _merit_ and _demerit_; it thus includes the whole phenomenon of morality. The exactly opposite state that follows upon the victory of probity, is proved to imply the same facts.

The Moral Sentiment, so striking in its character, has by some been supposed the foundation of all morality, but in point of fact it is itself constituted by these various judgments. Now that they are known to stand as its elements, he goes on to subject each to a stricter analysis, taking first the judgment of _good_ and _evil_, which is at the bottom of all the rest. It lies in the original constitution of human nature, being simple and indecomposable, like the judgment of the True and the Beautiful. It is absolute, and cannot be withheld in presence of certain acts; but it only declares, and does not constitute, good and evil, these being real and independent qualities of actions. Applied at first to special cases, the judgment of good gives birth to general principles that become rules for judging other actions. Like other sciences, morality has its axioms, justly called moral truths; if it is good to keep an oath, it is also true, the oath being made with no other purpose than to be kept. Faithful guarding as much belongs to the idea of a deposit, as the equality between its three angles and two right angles to the idea of a triangle. By no caprice or effort of will can a moral verity be made in the smallest degree other than it is.

But, he goes on, a moral verity is not simply to be believed; it must also be practised, and this is _obligation_, the second of the elements of moral sentiment. Obligation, like moral truth, on which it rests, is absolute, immutable, universal. Kant even went so far as to make it the principle of our morality; but this was subjectivizing good, as he had subjectivized truth. Before there is an obligation to act, there must be an intrinsic goodness in the action; the real first truth of morality is justics, _i.e._, the essential distinction of good and evil. It is justice, therefore, and not duty, that strictly deserves the name of a principle.

The next element is _liberty_. Obligation implies the faculty of resisting desire, passion, &c., else there would be a contradiction in human nature. But the truest proof of liberty is to be sought in the constant testimony of consciousness, that, in wishing this or that, I am equally able to will the contrary. He distinguishes between the power of willing and the power of executing; also between will and desire, or passion. In the conflict between will and the tyranny of desire lies liberty; and the aim of the conflict is the fulfilment of duty. For the will is never so free, never so much itself, as when yielding to the law of duty. Persons are distinguished from Things in having responsibility, dignity, intrinsic value. Because there is in me a being worthy of respect, I am bound in duty to respect myself, and I have the _right_ to be respected by you. My duty (he means, of course, what I owe to self) is the exact measure of my right. The character of being a _person_ is inviolable, is the foundation of property, is inalienable by self or others, and so forth.

He passes to the last element of the phenomenon of morality, the judgement of _merit_ and _demerit_. The judgement follows, as the agent is supposed free, and it is not affected by lapse of time. It depends also essentially on the idea that the agent knows good from evil. Upon itself follow the notions of reward and punishment. Merit is the natural right to be rewarded; demerit, paradox as it may appear, is the _right_ to be punished. A criminal would claim to be punished, if he could comprehend the absolute necessity of expiation; and are there not real cases of such criminals? But as there can be merit without actual reward, so to be rewarded does not constitute merit.

If good, he continues, is good in itself, and ought to be done without regard to consequences, it is no less true that the consequences of good cannot fail to be happy. Virtue without happiness and crime without misfortune are a contradiction, a disorder; which are hardly met with in the world, even as it is, or, where in a few cases they are found, are sure to be righted in the end by eternal justice. The sacrifice supposed in virtue, if generously accepted and courageously undergone, has to be recompensed in respect of the amount of happiness sacrificed.

Once more, he takes up the _Sentiment_, which is the general echo of all the elements of the phenomenon. Its end is to make the mind sensible of the bond between virtue and happiness; it is the direct and vivid application of the law of merit. Again, he touches the states of moral satisfaction and remorse, speaks of our sympathy with the moral goodness of others and our benevolent feeling that arises towards them--emotions all, but covering up judgments; and this is the end of his detailed analysis of the actual facts of the case. But he still goes on to sum up in exact expressions the foregoing results, and he claims especially to have overlooked neither the part played by Reason, nor the function of Sentiment. The rational character of the idea of good gives morality its firm foundation; the lively sentiment helps to lighten the often heavy burden of duty, and stirs up to the most heroic deeds. Self-interest too is not denied its place. In this connexion, led again to allude to the happiness appointed to virtue here or at least hereafter, he allows that God may be regarded as the fountain of morality, but only in the sense that his will is the expression of his eternal wisdom and justice. Religion crowns morality, but morality is based upon itself. The rest of the lecture is in praise of Eclecticism, and advocates consideration of all the facts involved in morality, as against exclusive theories founded upon only some of the facts.

Lectures 21st and 22nd, compressed into one (Ed. 1846) contain the application of the foregoing principles, and the answer to the question, what our duties are. Duty being absolute, truth becomes obligatory, and absolute truth being known by the reason only, to obey the law of duty is to obey reason. But what actions are conformable to reason? The characteristic of reason he takes to be Universality, and this will appear in the motives of actions, since it is these that confer on actions their morality. Accordingly, the sign whereby to discover whether an action is duty, is, if its motive when generalized appear to the reason to be a maxim of universal legislation for all free and intelligent beings. This, the norm set up by Kant, as certainly discovers what is and is not duty, as the syllogism detects the error and truth of an argument.

To obey reason is, then, the first duty, at the root of all others, and itself resting directly upon the relation between liberty and reason; in a sense, to remain reasonable is the sole duty. But it assumes special forms amid the diversity of human relations. He first considers the relations wherein we stand to ourselves and the corresponding duties. That there should be any such duties is at first sight strange, seeing we belong to ourselves; but this is not the same as having complete power over ourselves. Possessing liberty, we must not abdicate it by yielding to passions, and treat ourselves as if there were nothing in us that merits respect. We are to distinguish between what is peculiar to each of us, and what we share with humanity. Individual peculiarities are things indifferent, but the liberty and intelligence that constitute us persons, rather than individuals, demand to be respected even by ourselves. There is an obligation of self-respect imposed upon us as moral persons that was not established, and is not to be destroyed, by us. As special cases of this respect of the moral person in us, he cites (1) the duty of _self-control_ against anger or melancholy, not for their pernicious consequences, but as trenching upon the moral dignity of liberty and intelligence; (2) the duty of _prudence_, meaning providence in all things, which regulates courage, enjoins temperance, is, as the ancients said, the mother of all the virtues,--in short, the government of liberty by reason; (3) _veracity_; (4) duty towards the _body_; (5) duty of _perfecting_ (and not merely keeping intact) the intelligence, liberty, and sensibility that constitute us moral beings.

But the same liberty and intelligence that constitute me a moral person, and need thus to be respected even by myself, exist also in others, conferring rights on them, and imposing new duties of respect on me relatively to them. To their intelligence I owe _Truth_; their liberty I am bound to respect, sometimes even to the extent of not hindering them from making a wrong use of it. I must respect also their affections (family, &c.) which form part of themselves; their bodies; their goods, whether acquired by labour or heritage. All these duties are summed up in the one great duty of _Justice_ or respect for the rights of others; of which the greatest violation is slavery.

The whole of duty towards others is not however comprehended in justice. Conscience complains, if we have only not done injustice to one in suffering. There is a new class of duties--_consolation, charity, sacrifice_--to which indeed correspond no rights, and which therefore are not so obligatory as justice, but which cannot be said not to be obligatory. From their nature, they cannot be reduced to an exact formula; their beauty lies in liberty. But in charity, he adds, there is also a danger, from its effacing, to a certain extent, the moral personality of the object of it. In acting upon others, we risk interfering with their natural rights; charity is therefore to be proportioned to the liberty and reason of the person benefited, and is never to be made the means of usurping power over another.

Justice and Charity are the two elements composing social morality. But what is social? and on what is Society founded, existing as it does everywhere, and making man to be what he is? Into the hopeless question of its origin he refuses to enter; its present state is to be studied by the light of the knowledge of human nature. Its invariable foundations are (1) the need we have of each other, and our social instincts, (2) the lasting and indestructible idea and sentiment of right and justice. The need and instinct, of which he finds many proofs, begin society; justice crowns the work. The least consideration of the relations of man to man, suggest the essential principles of Society--justice, liberty, equality, government, punishment. Into each of these he enters. Liberty is made out to be assured and developed in society, instead of diminished. Equality is established upon the character of moral personality, which admits of no degree. The need of some repression upon liberty, where the liberty of others is trenched upon, conducts to the idea of Government--a disinterested third party armed with the necessary power to assure and defend the liberty of all. To government is to be ascribed, first its inseparable function of protecting the common liberty (without unnecessary repression), and next, beneficent action, corresponding to the duty