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ceiving moral excellence.”1 "Some actions have to men an immediate goodness;" "by a superior sense, which I call a moral one, we perceive pleasure in the contemplation of such actions in others, and are determined to love the agent (and much more do we perceive pleasure in being conscious of having done such actions ourselves) without any view of further natural advantage from them." 2

3

(3) David Hume agrees with Hutcheson. He discusses the question "whether 'tis by means of our ideas [reason] or impressions [feelings] we distinguish between vice and virtue, and pronounce an action blamable or praiseworthy," and finds that reason as such is wholly inactive and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals. Vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, or the comparison of ideas. Our decisions concerning moral rectitude and depravity are perceptions.

1 System, Bk. I.

2 Inquiry, Introduction. See especially Martineau, Types, Vol. II, Bk. II.

8 1711-1776. Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, etc. For bibliography see Weber, History of Philosophy, 417, note.

4 Treatise on Morals, Bk. III, Part I, § 1; Inquiry, Section I: "There has been a controversy started of late concerning the general foundation of morals: whether they be derived from reason or from sentiment; whether we attain the knowledge of them by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgment of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational, intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the human species." Selections by Hyslop.

Morality is more properly felt, than judged of; though this feeling or sentiment is commonly so soft and gentle that we are apt to confound it with an idea.1 "The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, blamable or praiseworthy; that which stamps on them the mark of honor or infamy, approbation or censure; that which renders morality an active principle, and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species." 2 And what is the nature of the feeling by which we know good and evil? To have the

1 Treatise on Morals, Bk. III, Part I, § 2.

2 Inquiry, Section I. See also Appendix I: "Now, as virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account, without fee or reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction which it conveys, it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which it touches; some internal taste, or feeling, or whatever you choose to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other. Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood, the latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution, the other has a productive faculty, and, gilding or staining all natural objects with the colors borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation. Reason, being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery. Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition."

sense of virtue is nothing but to feel a particular kind of satisfaction, a peculiar kind of pleasure.1

(4) To the same school belong also J. J. Rousseau,2 Kant (before the critical period), Adam Smith,* and J. F. Herbart.5 F. Brentano has attempted to strengthen the theory in a peculiar manner.6 There are, he holds, certain self-evident judgments, which carry their self-evidence in them, which it would be absurd to deny, like, Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other; and certain instinctive or blind judgments, which may or may not be true, about which there can be dispute. Similarly, there are certain higher or self-evident feelings, feelings which are valid for all human beings, feelings about which there can be no dispute, and lower feelings, which lack this self-evident character, about which there can be dispute. Thus we love knowledge and truth, and dislike error and ignorance, and there can be no dispute about the value of this feeling. Should a different human species love error and hate truth, we should regard its loving and hating as fundamentally wrong. That a man should love knowledge and hate ignorance is self-evident; that he should prefer champagne to Rhine-wine is

1 See Treatise, loc. cit., Section II; also Part III.

2 1712-1778.

8 See his Ueber die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und Moral, 1764. Cf. Förster, Der Entwicklungsgang der Kantischen Ethik; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik. A Theory of Moral Sentiments. 5 1776-1841. Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntniss, 1889.

+ 1723-1790. Born 1838.

not self-evident. In other words, we have an innate feeling of preference for the good.1

5. The Perceptional Intuitionists. In this class belong Bishop Butler, James Martineau, and W. E. H. Lecky. With them conscience is intuitive, but neither a feeling, as the foregoing thinkers declare, nor the product of reason in the Cudworthian sense, but an inner perception.

(1) According to Butler,2 there is a superior principle of reflection or conscience in every man, which distinguishes between the internal principles of his heart as well as his external actions; which passes judgment upon himself and them, and pronounces determinately some actions to be in themselves evil, wrong, unjust; which without being consulted, without being advised with, magisterially exerts itself, and approves or condemns him the doer of them accordingly. It is by this faculty, natural to man, that he is a moral agent, that he is a law to himself, but this faculty, not to be considered merely as a principle in his heart, which is to have some influence as well as others, but considered as a faculty in kind and in nature supreme over all others, and which bears its own authority of being You cannot form a notion of this faculty, con

So.

1 Hermann Schwarz, Grundzüge der Ethik, is an emotional intuitionist of the Hutcheson stamp. We feel intuitively the worth of sympathy to be higher than that of selfishness.

2 1692-1752. Sermons upon Human Nature. See also Dissertation upon Virtue. Works edited by Gladstone, 1897. Selections in Selby-Bigge, British Moralists, Vol. I. See Collins, Butler.

science, without taking in judgment, direction, superintendency. This is a constituent part of the idea, that is, of the faculty itself, and to preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength, as it had right, had it power as it had manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world. "What obligations are we under to attend to and follow it? Your obligation to obey this law is its being the law of your nature. That your conscience approves of

and attests to such a course of action is itself alone an obligation. Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide, the guide assigned us by the author of our nature," etc.1 "The whole moral law is as much matter of revealed command, as positive institutions are, for the Scripture enjoins every moral virtue. In this respect, then, they are both upon a level. But the moral law is moreover written upon our hearts, interwoven into our very nature. this is a plain intimation of the author of it, which is to be preferred when they interfere." 2

And

(2) Martineau's 3 modification of the intuitional theory is unique. On the simple testimony of our perceptive faculty, he says, we believe in the perceived object and the perceiving self. "This dual conviction rests upon the axiom that we must ac

1 Sermon iii. 81805-1900.

2 Analogy of Religion, Part II, chap. i. Types of Ethical Theory.

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