(4) Even the author of the Evidences of Christianity, William Paley,1 denies the existence of a moral sense.2 "Upon the whole," he says, "it seems to me, either that there exist no such instincts as compose what is called the moral sense [here Paley opposes Hume] or that they are not now to be distinguished from prejudices and habits; on which account they cannot be depended upon in moral reasoning," etc.3 "Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness."4 "We can be obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by: for nothing else can be a violent motive to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the laws of the magistrate, unless rewards and punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God."5 The difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty is

of Mandeville (1670-1733, author of The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public Benefits), Lamettrie (1709-1751, author of L'homme machine, Discours sur le bonheur), and Holbach (1723-1789, author of Système de la nature). All these thinkers are materialists. See especially Lange, History of Materialism; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik; Martineau, Types, Vol. II, pp. 312 ff.; Lecky, Morals, chap. i.

1 1743-1803.

2 See his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy.

8 Ib., Bk. I, chap. v.

5 Ib., Bk. II, chap. ii.

4 1b., Bk. I, chap. vii.

that, "in the one case, we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to come.

(5) Jeremy Bentham's 2 statements on this point are not more radical. He says: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to

point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do." 3 "Conscience is a thing of fictitious existence supposed to occupy a seat in the mind."4 Conscience is the favorable or unfavorable opinion a man has of his own conduct, and has value only in so far as it conforms to the principle of utility. It is utterly useless to speak of duties, he declares; the word itself has something disagreeable and repulsive in it. While the moralist is speaking of duties, each man is thinking of his own interests.5

According to the philosophers whom we have just been considering, man is by birth a moral ignoramus who desires his own happiness. He comes in contact with fellows similarly endowed, and in order to live with them must obey certain rules. The

1 Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Bk. II, chap. iii. 2 1748-1842. See especially Principles of Morals and Legislation.

3 Principles of Morals, etc., chap. i.

4 Deontology, Vol. I, p. 137.

5 For Bentham, see especially Lecky and Martineau, op. cit.

pains and pleasures annexed to these laws point out to him the course to pursue. Pleasure and pain are the great teachers of morality.

(6) But, it might be asked, how on this scheme can we explain the fact that men pronounce judgment upon acts without thinking about the pleasures and pains they produce? How does it happen that men love virtue for virtue's sake?

An ingenious theory, the so-called theory of association of ideas, is brought in to settle this difficulty.1 David Hartley 2 attempts to show how the moral sense is formed in a purely mechanical way. Man is at first governed solely by his pleasures and pains. He soon learns to associate his pleasures with that which pleases him, and then loves this for its own sake. The infant connects the idea of its mother with the pleasure she procures it, and so comes to love her for her own sake. Money in itself possesses nothing that is admirable or pleasurable; it is a means of procuring objects of desire, and so becomes associated in our minds with the idea of pleasure. Hence the miser comes to love it for its own sake, and is willing to forego the things which the money procures rather than part with a fraction of his gold. In the same way the moral sentiments are formed. They procure for us many advantages which we love, and we gradually trans

1 We find the beginnings of this theory in Hobbes, Locke, Hutcheson, Gay, and Tucker. See Lecky, Vol. I, pp. 22 ff. 2 1705-1757. Observations on Man.

fer our affections from these to the things which procure them, and love virtue for virtue's sake.1

(7) The most careful and detailed explanation of the moral faculty from this standpoint is given by Alexander Bain.2 According to him, conscience is an imitation within ourselves of the government without us. The first lesson that the child learns as a moral agent is obedience. "The child's susceptibility to pleasure and pain is made use of to bring about this obedience, and a mental association is rapidly formed between disobedience and apprehended pain, more or less magnified by fear." Forbidden actions arouse a certain dread; the fear of encountering pain is conscience in its earliest germ. The sentiment of love or respect toward persons in authority infuses a different species of dread, the dread of giving pain to a beloved object. Later on, the child learns to appreciate the reasons or motives that led to the imposition of the rules of conduct. "When the young mind is able to take notice of the use and meaning of the prohibitions imposed upon it, and to approve of the end intended by them, a new motive is added, and the conscience is then a triple compound, and begirds the action in

1 On Man, Vol. I, pp. 473–475; Vol. II, 338 f. See Lecky, Vol. I, pp. 22 ff., 67 note; Ribot, La psychologie anglaise contemporaine. This view is developed by James Mill (Analysis of the Human Mind, Vol. II), and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Utilitarianism, especially pp. 40-42, 44, 45, 46, 53 ff.

2 Born 1818. The Emotions and the Will; Mental and Moral Science.

question with a threefold fear; the last ingredient being paramount in the maturity of the sympathies and the reason. All that we understand by the authority of conscience, the sentiment of obligation, the feeling of right, the sting of remorse,can be nothing else than so many modes of expressing the acquired aversion and dread toward actions associated in the mind with the consequences now stated."

But there may not be present to a man's mind any of these motives, namely, the fear of retribution, or the respect to the authority commanding, affection or sympathy toward the persons or interests for whose sake the duty is imposed, his own advantage indirectly concerned, his religious feeling, his individual sentiments in accord with the spirit of the precept, or the infection of example. "Just as in the love of money for its own sake, one may come to form a habit of acting in a particular way, although the special impulses that were the original moving causes no longer recur to the mind." Here we have a case of the sense of duty in the abstract. This does not prove, however, that there exists a primitive sentiment of duty in the abstract, any more than the conduct of the miser proves that we are born with the love of gold in the abstract. "It is the tendency of association to erect new centres of force, detached from the particulars that originally gave them meaning; which new creations will sometimes assemble round themselves a more powerful body of