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

will constantly be under the influence of any one of the motives, there is one motive commonly uppermost whereby each can be characterized. Thus men, according to their habitual conduct, are known as passionate, egoistic, or virtuous.

We now summarize the opinions of Jouffroy:--

I.--The Standard is the Idea of Absolute Good or Universal Order in the sense explained by the author. Like Cousin, he identifies the 'good' with the 'true.' What, then, is the criterion that distinguishes moral from other truths? If _obligation_ be selected as the _differentia_, it is in effect to give up the attempt to determine what truths are obligatory. The idea of 'good' is obviously too vague to be a _differentia_. How far the idea of 'Universal Order' gets us out of the difficulty may be doubted, especially after the candid admission of the author, that it is an idea of which the majority of men have never any very clear notions.

II.--The moral faculty is Reason; Conscience is hardly more than a confused feeling of obligatoriness.

Sympathy is one of the primitive tendencies of our nature. Jouffroy's opinion on the subject is open to the objections urged against Butler's psychology.

He upholds the freedom of the Will, but embarrasses his argument by admitting, like Reid, that there is a stage in our existence when we are ruled by the passions, and are destitute of liberty.

III.--The Summum Bonum is the _end_ of every creature; the passions ought to be subordinated to self-interest, and self-interest to morality.

In regard to the other points, it is unnecessary to continue the summary.


NOTES

[Footnote 1: Duties strictly so called, the department of obligatory morality, enforced by punishment, may be exemplified in the following classified summary:--

Under the Legal Sanction, are included; (A) Forbearance from (specified) injuries; as (a) Intentional injury--crimes, (b) Injury not intentional--wrongs, repaired by Damages or Compensation. (B) The rendering of services; (a) Fulfilling contracts or agreements; (b) Reciprocating anterior services rendered, though, not requested, as in filial duty; (c) Cases of extreme or superior need, as parental duty, relief of destitution.

Under the Popular Sanction are created duties on such points as the following:--(1) The Etiquette of small societies or coteries. (2) Religious orthodoxy; Sabbath observance. (3) Unchastity; violations of the etiquette of the sexes, Immodesty, and whatever endangers chastity, especially in women. (4) Duties of parents to children, and of children to parents, beyond the requirements of the law. (5) Suicide: when only attempted, the individual is punished, when carried out, the relatives. (6) Drunkenness, and neglect of the means of self-support. (7) Gross Inhumanity. In all these cases the sanction, or punishment, is social; and is either mere disapprobation or dislike, not issuing in overt acts, or exclusion from fellowship and the good offices consequent thereon.]

[Footnote 2: Optional Morality, the Morality of Reward, is exemplified as follows:--

(A) A liberal performance of duties properly so called. (_a_) The support of aged parents; this, though to a certain extent a legal duty, is still more a virtue, being stimulated by the approbation of one's fellows. The performance of the family duties generally is the subject of commendation. (_b_) The payment of debts that cannot be legally recovered, as in the case of bankrupts after receiving their discharge.

These examples typify cases (1) where no definite law is laid down, or where the law is content with a minimum; and (2) where the law is restrained by its rules of evidence or procedure. Society, in such cases, steps in and supplies a motive in the shape of reward.

(B) Pure Virtue, or Beneficence; all actions for the benefit of others without stipulation, and without reward; relief of distress, promotion of the good of individuals or of society at large. The highest honours of society are called into exercise by the highest services.

Bentham's principle of the claims of superior need cannot be fully carried out, (although he conceives it might, in some cases), by either the legal or the popular sanction. Thus, the act of the good Samaritan, the rescue of a ship's crew from drowning, could not be exacted; the law cannot require heroism. It is of importance to remark, that although Duty and Nobleness, Punishment and Reward, are in their extremes unmistakably contrasted, yet there may be a margin of doubt or ambiguity (like the passing of day into night). Thus, expressed approbation, generally speaking, belongs to Reward; yet, if it has become a thing of course, the withholding of it operates as a Punishment or a Penalty.]

[Footnote 3: The conditions that regulate the authoritative enforcement of actions, are exhaustively given in works on Jurisprudence, but they do not all concern Ethical Theory. The expedience of imposing a rule depends on the importance of the object compared with the cost of the machinery. A certain line of conduct may be highly beneficial, but may not be a fit case for coercion. For example, the law can enforce only a _minimum_ of service: now, if the case be such, that a minimum is useless, as in helping a ship in distress, or in supporting aged parents, it is much, better to leave the case to voluntary impulses, seconded by approbation or reward. Again, an offence punished by law must be, in its nature, definable; which, makes a difficulty in such cases as insult, and defamation, and many species of fraud. Farther, the offence must be easy of detection, so that the vast majority of offenders may not escape. This limits the action of the law in unchastity.]

[Footnote 4: See, on the method of Sokrates, Appendix A.]

[Footnote 5: In setting forth, the Ethical End, the language of Sokrates was not always consistent. He sometimes stated it, as if it included an independent reference to the happiness of others; at other times, he speaks as if the end was the agent's own happiness, to which, the happiness of others was the greatest and most essential means. The first view, although not always adhered to, prevails in Xenophon; the second appears most in Plato.]

[Footnote 6: 'What Plato here calls the Knowledge of Good, or Reason,--the just discrimination and comparative appreciation, of Ends and Means--appears in the Politikus and the Euthydemus, under the title of the Regal or Political Art, as employing or directing the results of all other arts, which are considered as subordinate: in the Protagoras, under the title of art of calculation or mensuration: in the Philebus, as measure and proportion: in the Phaedrus (in regard to rhetoric) as the art of turning to account, for the main purpose of persuasion, all the special processes, stratagems, decorations, &c., imparted by professional masters. In the Republic, it is personified in the few venerable Elders who constitute the Reason of the society, and whose directions all the rest (Guardians and Producers) arc bound implicitly to follow: the virtue of the subordinates consisting in this implicit obedience. In the Leges, it is defined as the complete subjection in the mind, of pleasures and pains to right Reason, without which, no special aptitudes are worth, having. In the Xenophontic Memorabilia, it stands as a Sokratic authority under the title of Sophrosyne or Temperance: and the Profitable is declared identical with, the Good, as the directing and limiting principle for all human pursuits and proceedings.' (Grote's Plato, I., 362.)]

[Footnote 7: 'Indeed there is nothing more remarkable in the Gorgias, than the manner in which. Sokrates not only condemns the unmeasured, exorbitant, maleficent desires, but also depreciates and degrades all the actualities of life--all the recreative and elegant arts, including music and poetry, tragic as well as dithyrambic--all provision for the most essential wants, all protection against particular sufferings and dangers, even all service rendered to another person in the way of relief or of rescue--all the effective maintenance of public organized force, such as ships, docks, walls, arms, &c. Immediate satisfaction, or relief, and those who confer it, are treated with contempt, and presented as in hostility to the perfection of the mental structure. And it is in this point of view, that various Platonic commentators extol in an especial manner the Gorgias: as recognizing an Idea of Good superhuman and supernatural, radically disparate from pleasures and pains of any human being, and incommensurable with, them; an Universal Idea, which, though it is supposed to cast a distant light upon its particulars, is separated from them by an incalculable space, and is discernible only by the Platonic telescope.' (Grote, _Gorgias_)]

[Footnote 8: There is some analogy between the above doctrine and the great law of Self-conservation, as expounded in this volume (p. 75).]

[Footnote 9: Aristotle and the Peripatetics held that there were _tria genera bonorum_: (1) Those of the mind _(mens sana)_, (2) those of the body, and (3) external advantages. The Stoics altered this theory by saying that only the first of the three was _bonum_; the others were merely _praeposita_ or _sumenda_. The opponents of the Stoics contended that this was an alteration in words rather than in substance.]

[Footnote 10: This also might truly be said of the Epicureans; though with them it is not so much _pride_, as a quiet self-satisfaction in escaping pains and disappointments that they saw others enduring. See the beginning of Lucretius' second book, and the last epistle of Epicurus to Idomeneus.]

[Footnote 11: This was a later development of Stoicism: the earlier theorists laid it down that there were no graduating marks below the level of wisdom; all shortcomings were on a par. _Good_ was a point, _Evil_ was a point; there were gradations in the _praeposita_ or _sumenda_ (none of which were _good_), and in the _rejecta_ or _rejicienda_ (none of which were _evil_), but there was no _more or less good_. The idea of advance by steps towards virtue or wisdom, was probably familiar to Sokrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus; the Stoic theories, on the other hand, tended to throw it out of sight, though they insisted strenuously on the necessity of mental training and meditation.]

[Footnote 12: This theory (taken in its most general sense, and apart from differences in the estimation of particular pleasures and pains), had been proclaimed long before the time of Epicurus. It is one of the various theories of Plato: for in his dialogue called Protagoras (though in other dialogues he reasons differently) we find it explicitly set forth and elaborately vindicated by his principal spokesman, Sokrates, against the Sophist Protagoras. It was also held by Aristippus (companion of Sokrates along with Plato) and by his followers after him, called the Cyrenaics. Lastly, it was maintained by Eudoxus, one of the most estimable philosophers contemporary with Aristotle. Epicurus was thus in no way the originator of the theory: but he had his own way of conceiving it--his own body of doctrine physical, cosmological, and theological, with which it was implicated--and his own comparative valuation of pleasures and pains.]

[Footnote 13: The soul, according to Epicurus, was a subtle but energetic compound (of air, vapour, heat, and another nameless ingredient), with its best parts concentrated in the chest, yet pervading and sustaining the whole body; still, however, depending for its support on the body, and incapable of separate or disembodied continuance.]

[Footnote 14: Aristot. De Coelo. II.a.12, p. 292, 22, 6, _5_. In the Ethics, Aristotle assigns theorizing contemplation to the gods, as the only process worthy of their exalted dignity and supreme felicity.]

[Footnote 15: Xenophon Memor. I. 1--10; IV. 3--12.]

[Footnote 16: These exhortations to active friendship were not unfruitful. We know, even by the admission of witnesses adverse to the Epicurean doctrines, that the harmony among the members of the sect, with common veneration for the founder, was more marked and more enduring than that exhibited by any of the other philosophical