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presumption is always against law.' The scientific sociologist would have to take into account a series of observations to which the utilitarian is apt to be altogether blind. He would observe, perhaps, that the family is the primary germ of all society; that, in proportion as its sanctity has been maintained, society has been in a healthy and vigorous condition; that men in all ages have felt the necessity of regulating the strongest instinct of our nature, so as to bring it upon the side of the social, instead of the anti-social, tendencies; that the theological sanction, however superstitious in form, is the expression of the experience of many ages, blindly feeling its way to promote the welfare of the race, and preserving those races in which it has been allowed to operate with sufficient strength; that, therefore, the presumption is in favour of the social regulations in which it is embodied, however its form may be obsolete; and thus, that if any remedy is required for existing grievances, it should be applied tentatively and cautiously. A full understanding, in short, of the functions discharged by the family in the social organisation would probably reveal many ulterior and vitally important consequences of any change in its constitution to which the rough calculations of the utilitarian are necessarily insensible. We are not, at present, if we ever shall be, scientific sociologists, but the bare recognition of the possibility of such a science, the knowledge that there are laws, if only we could discover them, implies the application of a method of enquiry totally different from that which suggests itself to a crude utilitarian.

110. Finally, we may remark that the same imperfection. explains Hume's inadequate appreciation of the true value of the great moral forces. The conscience had always been associated with a belief in supernatural penalties. Those penalties had become incredible. Therefore, the instincts called conscience had no real significance. A real historical sense, which is but another side of a true conception of sociology, would have suggested to him a more adequate measure of feelings, which have played so vast a part in the development of the human race, even if he had not personally sympathised with them. But Hume, like other philosophers

I shall remark hereafter how these principles were marked out by Godwin— a distinguished disciple of Hume's philosophy.

of his time, was content to class the Puritan creed as 'enthusiastic,' and the Catholic as superstitious;' and, seeing the weakness of these beliefs, to infer, very illogically, the nullity of their passions. This inadequate view of history, or, in other words, of the unity and continuity of the case, is thus the main source of Hume's defects as a moralist, as well as of other shortcomings.

III. One side of Hume's theory remains to be considered, and it is of vital importance to the later history of moral speculation. How is morality to be preserved? What are the motives upon which we must ultimately rely to secure observance of the moral law, whatever its criterion or the faculty which discovers it? A moral law, supernaturally revealed and enforced by supernatural sanctions, may be enforced upon beings corrupt by nature. But if the law be derived from man as well as imposed upon man, it must reflect the qualities of the legislator. To anyone, then, who, like Hume, declines to look outside the visible universe for the explanation of any phenomena, it follows that the ultimate source of the virtuous affections must be discovered in the human heart. The theological dogmas, regarded by divines as imposed from without, can only be the modes by which the human intellect in its earlier stages interpreted its own aspirations to itself. Hume, therefore, agrees to some extent with Shaftesbury, in restoring the nobler element which theologians had banished from our nature. Man, according to Hume, has made God after his own image, and whatever appears in the divine ideal must be a reflection from the intellect which framed it.

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112. It is, therefore, an essential part of Hume's theory to demonstrate the reality of the altruistic sentiments. A scientific method must admit the existence of feelings recognised by consciousness. We admire, so his argument runs, conduct which is useful. But useful? For what? For somebody's interest, surely. Whose interest, then? Not our own only; for our approbation frequently extends further. It must, therefore, be the interest of those who are served by the character or action approved of; and these, we may conclude, however remote, are not totally indifferent to us.'1 Powerful

1 Hume's Works, iv. 206.

as is the passion of self-love, it is easy to discover instances which are not resolvable into it; for moral approbation survives where our private interests are separable from, or even opposed to, the public interests. Sympathy, in short, is natural. Nobody would tread with equal indifference upon the pavement and upon the gouty toes of a man with whom he had no quarrel.' And, however weak the sympathy is supposed, it is enough to prove the case. Once grant that a man is not purely selfish, and experience alone can prove how strong may be the unselfish element of our nature. The fact that it exists sufficiently upsets the antecedent metaphysical objections. These objections are considered in an appendix specially devoted to the subject. Hume argues that, even if true in a sense, they are irrelevant. Should a 'philosophical chemistry' be capable of resolving all passions into modifications of self-love, the distinction between self-love in its primitive state as regard to our own interests and its modified state as regard for the interests of others, is still of vital importance. The colour of a countenance would not be less beautiful though we should discover it to be produced by minute variations in the thickness of the skin. The analysis, however, cannot be easily admitted. The explanation which admits the elementary character of benevolence is the simplest and probably the truest. Though we often conceal from ourselves the true nature of our motives, it is not because our motives are abstruse; nor is it easy to resolve the affections of animals into 'refined deductions of self-interest,' and to suppose the maternal tenderness traceable through all orders of sensible beings to be self-love in disguise. Finally, in an argument borrowed from Butler, Hume tries to show that every appetite must exist antecedently to its gratification, and that self-love thus implies the existence of other passions, amongst which we may recognise benevolence, as naturally as thirst or hunger.

113. Whatever the force of this reasoning, it must be admitted that there is a great appearance of logic in a different conclusion. The doctrine that each man can only care for his own happiness is terribly plausible, and fits in admirably with individualism. If men have been moulded by their social relations, they should have impulses explicable only by Hume's Works, p. 212.

2 Ib. iv. 268.

3 Ib. iv. 270.

reference to social conditions. If men are fully intelligible as isolated individuals, and this assumption seems to be in accordance with the general tenor of Hume's philosophy, such impulses must appear to be unaccountable. If society, in other words, is a mere aggregate of independent units, and not an organic compound of related units, altruistic emotions. are superfluous. Hume, indeed, escapes by appealing to experience; and experience-we may fully agree-amply justifies him. But then it seems necessary to admit the truth of his theory that anything may cause anything, and therefore to accept as an infallible fact what could hardly be anticipated from his general principles; or, perhaps, we may admit that Hume had an indistinct view of results which he could not explicitly formulate. Meanwhile, it was easier for most thinkers of his school to accept the explanation which he rejected, and to assume that altruism was merely self-love disguised. This indeed may be regarded as an early form of the explanation which we may probably regard as the soundest-namely, that the altruistic feelings are developed out of self-regarding feelings, though they have come to be something radically different. So long, however, as the development is supposed to take place in each individual, and a hereditary predisposition is tacitly denied, the doctrine tends to lapse into a more or less undisguised selfishness. In Mandeville it had appeared in the coarsest shape, as he denied that virtue is anything but a pretence. In later writers of the Benthamite school, the difficulty is more or less skilfully surmounted; but they generally show a reluctance, as did Bentham himself, to admit the possibility of a perfectly disinterested motive.

114. This tendency comes out in a different shape in another school of writers, which may probably be regarded as the dominant school of the century. Theological doctrine may be interpreted as purely selfish, though writers of more or less mystic tendency try to free it from the imputation. When the animating principle of the moral law is regarded as the will of a supernatural being, and that being is fashioned after the likeness of man, the penalties of disobeying the law become exaggerated to infinite proportions. Hell must be made more terrible the further it is removed from sensible percep

tion; and the penalties and rewards become so tremendous, that, if they could be fully realised, selfishness would be inevitable. The fate of his own soul becomes of such importance to each man that he would be mad to care for anything else. What can it profit him if he confers any benefit upon others and loses himself? If man is corrupt by nature, the ultimate sanction which keeps him in order must be sheer terror of Almighty vengeance. As theology decayed, the tendency of the largest class was, as we have seen at length, to remove the miraculous from the present, and to leave it in the past. The sense of facts was too strong to admit of any belief in supernatural agency in the eighteenth century; but, if the desire for logical unity was weak, it would still be allowed to find a refuge in the first century. In moral speculation the same tendency exhibited itself in the admission that men's conduct must be regulated by ordinary prudence, but a retention of the fear of hell as a sufficient motive to clench moral doubts. There was nothing, it was plain, supernatural about our immediate motives, but a supernatural object in the extreme distance might be allowed to have an occasional influence. In ninety-nine out of a hundred actions men might be guided by common sense, exerted upon obvious considerations; but, if in the hundredth a man was tempted to step beyond the line, or if he insisted upon raising some remote question as to ultimate grounds of action, it was convenient to have a hell in the background. How the existence of hell could be proved consistently with the ordinary philosophy was one of those awkward questions which concerned only philosophers, and in regard to which the ordinary philosopher was apt to reply by sending a man back to common sense. This kind of theological utilitarianisın was specially prevalent during the last half of the century, and we must notice one or two of the principal writers.

115. Less philosophical, it was a more convenient compromise between the old and the new. The orthodox teachers protested against all attempts to found theism or morality upon unassisted reasoning. Human ignorance, according to them, made it necessary that God should be made known to man by supernatural intervention and human corruption that his laws should be enforced upon them by supernatural sanctions.

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