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heavy burden of human misery and corruption. The horror of sin and death weighs upon his spirits. Our wisest course in life is to endeavour chiefly to escape misery.' Mitigation of sorrow, rather than actual happiness, is all that can be hoped by his sorely tried soul. Hence nature, the deity of Shaftesbury, is invested by him with the terrible attributes of a judging and avenging God. To prove that the existence of such a God may be inferred from the facts of the universe, is the purpose of the 'Analogy.' To prove the same doctrine from the facts of human nature is the purpose of the Sermons. Nature, as interpreted by Shaftesbury or by Clarke, is too impartial a deity to satisfy his conceptions. It is the cause of evil as well as of good. A beast, drawn to his destruction by a bait, acts 'naturally,' because he gratifies his ruling appetite; a man, drawn to destruction by his ruling appetite, might seem to be in the same case. But since such an action is utterly disproportionate to the nature of man, it is, in the strictest and most proper sense, unnatural; this word expressing that disproportion.' 2 Whence this difference in our judgments? Why condemn a Catiline and not condemn a tiger? Shaftesbury's vague declamation gave, it seemed, no sufficient reply. The a priori mode of reasoning, though Butler, with characteristic caution, admits its validity, was not so applicable to the men whom he desired to meet. His special method consists in inferring from nature a Creator distinguished, so to speak, by personal idiosyncrasies. He has to show that the God who made alike the good and the bad instincts, takes part with the good and not with the bad; and, moreover, he has to show this from the inspection of the instincts themselves. Nature is to testify to a special design, not to an impartial and abstract reflection of itself. This is the problem ever present to Butler's mind, and his answer to it is the essence of his writings.

49. We have seen how this was done in the 'Analogy.' In the Sermons, the starting-point is identical. The independent system of morality supplied the external point of view from which Butler discovered the character of this life as a probationary state. In the Sermons, the instincts which Ib. preface, p. vii.

1 Butler's Works, ii. 82, sermon vi.

2 Ib. p. 28, sermon ii.

enable us to recognise this moral law enable him to solve the problem of human nature. Shaftesbury's moral sense becomes with him the conscience-the conscience being no longer an æsthetic perception of the harmony of the universe, but rather the sense of shame which makes our mortal nature 'tremble like a guilty thing surprised' in the presence of its Creator. The weakness which he indicates in Shaftesbury's teaching is the absence of a due recognition of the authoritative character of conscience. For conscience is God's viceroy; our nature means 'the voice of God within us.' 2 To stifle its commands is mere usurpation.3 He compares human nature to a civil constitution, in which conscience plays the part of sovereign. And thus we discover the true meaning of the ancient phrase of acting in conformity to nature. That formula might be taken to mean acting from any natural impulse, in which case, the same action would at once obey and contradict nature; or it might mean obeying our strongest passions; which, as Butler says with characteristic pessimism, 'being vicious ones, mankind is in this sense naturally vicious.' As these two meanings fail to reveal a moral law, we must take refuge in a third; namely, that to act according to nature is to obey that power which has a natural supremacy. The conscience, enthroned within our souls, passes an authoritative judgment upon our actions; declares which are right and which wrong; approves or condemns the other, and anticipates ' a higher and more effectual sentence.' It is by this 'faculty natural to man, that he is a moral agent, that he is a law to himself; by this faculty, I say, 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 so.' 'Had it strength, as it has right,' he says of the conscience; 'had it power, as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world. This is Butler's most characteristic doctrine. The constitution of man, like the constitution of his dwelling-place, points unmis

1 Butler's Works, ii. preface, p. xiv. 2 Ib. ii. 80, sermon vi.

3 Ib. ii. 33, sermon ii.

Ib. ii. 34, sermon iii.

5 Ib. ii. 25, sermon ii.

Ib. ii. 27, sermon ii.
Ib. ii. 31, sermon ii.

takably to his Creator. In both cases we recognise the final causes of the phenomena. A man,' he says, 'can as little doubt that his eyes were given him to see with as he can doubt of the truth of the science of optics, deduced from ocular experiments;' he can as little doubt that shame 'was given to him to prevent his doing shameful actions as he can doubt whether his eyes were given him to guide his steps.' The exact correspondence between the natural and moral world, or between the 'inward frame of man' and his external circumstances, is a particular instance of that general law of mutual adaptation which runs through the universe. Thus 'The several passions and affections in the heart of man' afford 'as certain instances of final causes as any whatever, which are more commonly alleged for such.' The correspondence between the organism and the medium, which, from the scientific point of view, is a condition of existence, is with Butler, in morality as in all other questions, a proof of a special purpose of the Creator. What is peculiar to him is the character of those purposes and of the Creator whom they reveal.

50. Butler anticipates and gives a rather singular answer to one difficulty. Why should I obey my conscience? asks the objector. Your obligation to obey the law,' he replies, 'is its being the law of your nature;' 2 for conscience is 'the guide assigned to us by the author of our nature.' But why should I obey the law, persists the objector; meaning, what private interest have I in obeying it? In answer to this, Butler labours like Shaftesbury to prove that virtue and private interest generally coincide in their directions. This anxiety to establish the proposition that it is, on the whole, profitable to be virtuous, fits in rather awkwardly with his system, and is an unfortunate concession to the general spirit of the age. He expressly promises in the beginning of the eleventh sermon that 'all possible concessions' shall be made to the favourite passion' of his age-namely, self-love. ing that the coincidence between the dictates of virtue and a Ib. ii. 4, sermon i.

Butler's Works, ii. 21, sermon ii.

2 Ib. ii. 37, sermon iii.

Feel

See, too, the remarkable passage in sermon xi. (ii. 170) where he seems to admit that we cannot justify ourselves in pursuing virtue, or anything else, till we are convinced that it will be for our happiness, or, at least, not contrary to it.' 5 Butler's Works, ii. 152, sermon xi.

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rational self-love is not absolutely perfect, he introduces apologetically, and by way of supplement, what he might more fitly have proclaimed as a leading principle of his system; and, even then, promises the discord shall not be definitive. Although exceptions to the general principle are, he says, 'much fewer than are commonly thought,' they exist here, but 'all shall be set right at the final distribution of things.' Thus the selfish will find at last that the man who has sacrificed present advantages to virtue 'has infinitely better provided for himself and secured his own interest and happiness.' 2

1

51. That strain we heard was of a lower mood. Even Butler is bowing his knee in the house of Rimmon; and, in spite of the depth of his moral sentiments, is consenting to make virtue a question of profit and loss. The whole significance of his theory lies in the mysterious attributes with which conscience is surrounded; and yet in his anxiety to 'make all possible concessions,' he is endangering the very core of his teaching. This view, however, might be excised with benefit to the general argument. But, meanwhile, a difficulty more vital from a logical point of view passes unnoticed. The supremacy of conscience, says Butler, is a supremacy de jure and not de facto. We can disobey its dictates; but, if we disobey them, we act wrongly. What, then, is meant by acting wrongly? Disobeying conscience? Then his assertion comes to be that those who disobey conscience-disobey conscience. We disapprove immoral actions, and immoral actions are those which we disapprove. What then is this special supremacy of conscience? Why is it exceptional? Every instinct, good or bad, avenges itself by inflicting pain when we resist its dictates. What is the specific peculiarity of the pangs inflicted by conscience? Conscience, says Butler, brings with it its own credentials; the supremacy is 'a constituent part of the idea, that is, of the faculty itself ;'3 it is implied in the very meaning of the word duty. The conception of a self-evidencing power seems to involve a vicious circle. Exclude the idea of right from the supremacy, and the statement becomes inaccurate; admit it, and the definition includes the very thing to be defined. Conscience must, in a Ib. ii. 31, sermon ii.

1 Butler's Works, ii. 41, sermon iii. 2 Ib. ii. 42, ib.

some way, derive its credentials from some other authority than itself. If, for example, conscience be an infallible guide to those actions which increase the happiness of mankind, its right to govern follows from the beneficial effects of its rule. Butler, however, expressly and indignantly repudiates the doctrine which measures the goodness of actions by their consequences. The inward 'judge of right and wrong,' he tells us, approves or disapproves many actions 'abstracted from the consideration of their tendency' to the happiness or misery of this world.' Butler's escape from the vicious circle really consists in his assumption that the conscience represents the will of God. He is blind to the difficulty, because he conceives the final cause of conscience to be evident. This mysterious power, claiming an absolute supremacy, can derive its origin from nothing else than the divine source of all mystery. A blind instinct, ordering us to do this and that, for arbitrary or inscrutable reasons, is entitled to 'no special respect so long as we confine ourselves to nature. But when behind nature we are conscious of nature's God, we reverence our instincts as implanted by a divine hand, and enquire no further into their origin and purpose. No suspicion occurred to him that the marks of a divine origin which he supposed himself to be discovering by impartial examination, might be merely the result of his having stated the problem in terms of theology. As in the 'Analogy' his argument depends on assuming suffering to be supernatural punishment, so here it depends on assuming the promptings of conscience to be supernatural commands.

52. Around the conscience, in Butler's conception of human nature, are grouped a number of instincts, inferior in authority, but each ruling over the province assigned to it— impelling forces, regulated and controlled by the higher power. The two nearest the throne are benevolence and self-love; beneath them come such passions as, for example, resentment, which also are 'implanted in our nature by God,' and destined to excite us against injury and wickedness.' 2 Even the lower appetites and passions are 'placed within as a 1 Butler's Works, ii. 191, note, sermon xii., and 'Dissertation on Virtue,' i. 382. See above, ch. v. sec. 13.

2 Ib. ii. 114, sermon viii.

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