may be pretty simply stated.. He holds, in opposition to Locke, that all ideas are derived from sensation, the remaining ideas of reflection being simply the residuum which he was incapable of sufficiently analysing.' The ideas which thus enter the mind are gradually transformed by force of association into more complex products. The pleasures and pains which are compounded of the primary sensations may be divided into seven classes: (1) sensation; (2) imagination; (3) ambition; (4) self-interest; (5) sympathy; (6) theopathy; and (7) the moral sense. The pleasures and pains of sensation are the ultimate irresoluble facts. From them are generated the pleasures and pains of the imagination. From these two, again, in various combinations, arise the pleasures and pains of ambition. From the three thus obtained, the pleasures and pains of self-interest, and so on. But, again, each class of pleasures and pains reacts upon the previous classes; and thus we have wholes too complex to admit of complete analysis. In mathematical language it may be said that six equations arise from stating each of the latter six classes in terms of all the others; and thus it is possible to determine every one of the other classes as functions of the primitive sensations. The problem is ingeniously worked out in each case; but the process is too complicated and too unsatisfactory to be worth following. 70. Upon this foundation Hartley erects his theory of the rule of life. The innumerable pains and pleasures, as they strike upon our sense, cause vibrations which tend to coalesce. Association thus converts a state in which both pleasure and pain are felt by turns into a state in which pure pleasure and pure pain are alone perceived. But as pleasures are more numerous than pains, the resulting state will be generally one of pleasure alone; and thus, ultimately, association has a tendency to reduce the state of those who have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil back again to a paradisaical one.' The painful element is gradually absorbed in the pleasurable, until at last it is altogether eliminated. By a similar process we may trace the proper course to be pursued 2 Ib. i. 369; part i. prop. 89. 1 Hartley, i. 360; part i. prop. 88. !! by each individual. Mankind is endued with a desire of obtaining happiness;1 but this desire, when properly regulated, leads not to selfishness, but to an utter annihilation of self. Analysing each of the classes of the pleasure, Hartley discovers that in each case the purest enjoyment is derived from those pleasures which border upon the higher class. The sensual and the purely selfish pleasures should be sought only in strict subordination to the love of man and the love of God. By a process of successive approximations (the mathematical analogy is always present to his mind) the lower desires will thus be gradually merged in the higher, till we arrive at 'perfect self-annihilation and the pure love of God.' The moral sense in Hartley's classification lies above theopathy; but the moral sense is the sum total'3 of all the others, and not a distinct faculty. It represents the state of mind which results when the whole nature is brought into its final harmony. We begin as animals, with nothing but sensations; we should end as angels rapt in the beatific vision of the all-perfect Creator. Hartley expresses his conclusion in that queer mathematical mysticism which is characteristic of the strange contrasts of his system. Let W, he says, represent the love of the world; F, the fear, and L, the love of God. Then we may say that W: F: F: L or W= In our initial state we fear God infinitely more than we love him; and love the world infinitely more than we fear God. In our final state, the ratios should be reversed, and the love of the world be swallowed up in the fear, and that again in the love of God. W, that is, should approach indefinitely to zero; and L must, therefore, be indefinitely greater than F. The good Hartley smiles complacently at the 'new and compendious light' which he has thus thrown upon the most important of all problems. He has compressed religion into a pocket formula. F" 71. The kernel of his system of course lies in that theory of association which provides the machinery for this curious transformation, by which vibratiuncles set up in the medullary substance of the brain are ultimately converted into the pure 1 Hartley, ii. 197; part ii. prop. 46. 2 Ib. ii. 282; part ii. prop. 67. Ib. i. 497; part i. prop. 99. Ib. ii. 329; part ii. prop. 72 (Scholium). love of God. The general doctrine is familiar enough. The miser loves money as an end, because he has associated it with the pleasures produced by money. As we thus learn to value the cause from first valuing the thing caused, we are led by the necessity of our natures to rest at last upon him who is the inexhaustible fountain of all power, knowledge, goodness, majesty, glory, property, &c.' By the same process children learn to love the parents, attendants, or playfellows, who are the cause of most of their pleasures. The amusements which we share with others have the same tendency; the honour procured by benevolence, and the pleasures of religion, and the moral sense, tend to strengthen the early associations, and thus, without any direct expectation of reward, or even of subsidiary pleasure, benevolence becomes an ultimate object for its own sake. 'And this,' says Hartley, 'I take to be a proof from the doctrine of association, that there is, and must be, such a thing as pure disinterested benevolence; also a just account of the origin and nature of it.' 2 72. This is Hartley's contribution to a moral theory. Its value and its limitations are tolerably clear. The great problem of contemporary moralists was to solve an apparent contradiction. The purely selfish solution-the doctrine, that is, that a man neither does nor can act except from a regard to his own interests-has a terrible plausibility, especially when all philosophy is obliged to start from the considerations of the individual mind, instead of contemplating the social organism. The very existence of 'altruistic' sentiments appears to be contradictory, from this point of view. Some writers denied, with Mandeville, that they existed, or, with Butler and Hutcheson, regarded the faculty which sanctions them as in some sense supernatural. Hartley still retains the conception of final causes, but endeavours to lay bare the machinery by which they work. The process by which a regard for self is gradually refined into pure love of God or our neighbours is still the work of a divine hand, but it may be studied, analysed, and shown to conform to certain 1 Hartley, i. 463; part i. prop. 96. general laws. No one had explained the power of association in regard to the emotions with so much ingenuity, and, as association is doubtless a true cause, Hartley had the merit of really improving our conception of the mode in which the moral sentiments are generated in the individual. So few men have really added to our limited stock of moral theories, that the merit must be regarded as a very high one. On the other hand, the value of Hartley's speculation is confined to this branch of ethical speculation. It is a general weakness of his system, resulting from its mode of ignoring ultimate philosophical problems, that he never seems to allow for general truths. Why does not each of those bundles of vibratiuncles which we call brains, differing in nature, and exposed to infinitely various conditions, grind out a different set of truths? How can there be a universal system of morality? Hartley seems to prove that each individual must tend, as time goes on, to become more exclusively animated by the love of God-a result which is at least opposed to the ordinary views of human experience. The formation of a moral standard is not definitely explained; though some theory might be accommodated to his system. But, without going into metaphysical questions, it is plain that this weakness is significant of the individualist method of Hartley, and that, on his own showing, the doctrine requires to be supplemented by a study of the reciprocal action upon each other of dif ferent members of the race. In other words, Hartley's doctrine is defective from the absence of any sociology, or even of the perception that some sociological theory is necessary to frame a moral doctrine based upon experience. He might then have anticipated the teaching of some cognate schools in later times. 73. Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments' appeared in 1759,2 and won a rapid popularity, though producing little conviction. The qualities of thought and style which afterwards caused the success of the Enquiry into the Wealth of Nations' are equally visible in its predecessor. Smith's ingenious and discursive intellect pours itself out in 1 Hartley's doctrine coincides curiously on some points with Comte's teaching as to the cultivation of the altruistic sentiments, 2 A tenth edition in 1804. streams of diffuse eloquence, often brilliant with felicitous illustrations, and quick flashes of historical insight, and yet wide rather than deep, rather dexterous in new combinations than penetrating the essence of the subject, and, therefore, apt to disappoint us by a certain superficiality and flimsiness. Smith's ingenuity in tracing the working of the mechanism of human nature is so marked and so delightful to himself that he almost forgets to enquire into the primary forces which set it in action. He describes the mutual action and reaction of the passions with more fidelity than the passions themselves. Smith, in fact, is a thorough representative of that optimistic Deism which we have seen illustrated by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Hutcheson, Smith's predecessor in the chair of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow,' was in this respect nearer to Smith than was Smith's friend and teacher, Hume. The characteristic difference appears in this, that Smith follows Hutcheson and departs from Hume in(making the doctrine of final causes an essential part of his system.) Although we have no longer that extraordinary complex machinery of primitive instincts which, according to Butler and Hutcheson, had been mysteriously implanted in our bosom as divinely appointed monitors, yet Smith constantly regards human nature as a mechanism skilfully contrived to carry out the divine purposes. He simplifies the construction with a view to a rational explanation; but the action of the artificer is still discernible. Superfluous wheels and pullies have been removed, but the general conception remains. 74. His theology rests essentially upon the 'whatever is, is right' dogma. He believes in a 'great, benevolent, and allwise Being,' who is determined by his own perfections to maintain in the universe at all times the greatest possible quantity of happiness. A belief in a future life is necessary to make us happy in this, and to 'illumine the dreary prospect of its continually approaching mortality.' The doctrine is so cheering that every virtuous man must earnestly? wish to believe it; and disbelief has only been produced by 3 1 Hutcheson died in 1747. Craigie, his successor, was succeeded by Smith, in 1752. 2 Smith's 'Moral Sentiments,' ii. 98; part vi. sec. 2, ch. iii. Ib. i. 267; part iii. ch. ii. |