Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics Part 24

He then proceeds to the theory of PUNISHMENT (XIII., XIV., XV.), to the cla.s.sification of OFFENCES (XVI.), and to the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence (XVII.). The two first subjects--Punishments and Offences--are interesting chiefly in regard to Legislation. They have also a bearing on Morals; inasmuch as society, in its private administration of punishments, ought, no less than the Legislator, to be guided by sound scientific principles.

As respects Punishment, he marks off (1) cases where it is _groundless_; (2) where it is _inefficacious_, as in Infancy, Insanity, Intoxication, &c.; (3) cases where it is _unprofitable_; and (4) cases where it is _needless_. It is under this last herd that he excludes from punishment the dissemination of what may be deemed pernicious principles. Punishment is needless here, because the end can be served by reply and exposure.

The first part of Chapter XVII. is ent.i.tled the 'Limits between Private Ethics and the Art of Legislation;' and a short account of it will complete the view of the author's Ethical Theory.

Ethics at large, is defined the art of directing men's actions to the production of the greatest possible quant.i.ty of happiness, on the part of those whose interest is in view, Now, these actions may be a man's own actions, in which case they are styled the _art of self-government_, or _private ethics_. Or they may be the actions of other agents, namely, (1) Other human beings, and (2) Other Animals, whose interests Bentham considers to have been disgracefully overlooked by jurists as well as by mankind generally.

In so far as a man's happiness depends on his own conduct, he may be said to _owe a duty to himself_; the quality manifested in discharge of this branch of duty (if duty it is to be called) is PRUDENCE. In so far as he affects by his conduct the interests of those about him, he is under _a duty to others_. The happiness of others may be consulted in two ways. First, negatively, by forbearing to diminish it; this is called PROBITY. Secondly, in a positive way, by studying to increase it; which is expressed by BENEFICENCE.

But now the question occurs, how is it that under Private Ethics (or apart from legislation and religion) a man can be tinder a motive to consult other people's happiness? By what obligations can he be bound to _probity_ and _beneficence_? A man can have no _adequate_ motives for consulting any interests but his own. Still there are motives for making us consult the happiness of others, namely, the purely social motive of Sympathy or Benevolence, and the semi-social motives of Love of Amity and Love of Reputation. [He does not say here whether Sympathy is a motive grounded on the pleasure it brings, or a motive irrespective of the pleasure; although from other places we may infer that he inclines to the first view.]

Private Ethics and Legislation can have but the same end, happiness.

Their means, the actions prompted, must be nearly the same. Still they are different. There is no case where a man ought not to be guided by his own, or his fellow-creatures', happiness; but there are many cases where the legislature should not compel a man to perform such actions.

The reason is that the Legislature works solely by Punishment (reward is seldom applied, and is not properly an act of legislation). Now, there are cases where the punishment of the political sanction ought not to be used; and if, in any of these cases, there is a propriety of using the punishments of private ethics (the moral or social sanction), this circ.u.mstance would indicate the line of division.

First, then, as to the cases where punishment would be _groundless_. In such cases, neither legislation nor private ethics should interfere.

Secondly. As to cases where it would be _inefficacious_, where punishment has no deterring motive power,--as in Infancy, Insanity, overwhelming danger, &c.,--the public and the private sanctions are also alike excluded.

Thirdly. It is in the cases where Legislative punishment would be _unprofitable_, that we have the great field of Private Ethics.

Punishment is unprofitable in two ways. First, when the danger of detection is so small, that nothing but enormous severity, on detection, would be of avail, as in the illicit commerce of the s.e.xes, which has generally gone unpunished by law. Secondly, when there is danger of involving the innocent with the guilty, from inability to define the crime in precise language. Hence it is that rude behaviour, treachery, and ingrat.i.tude are not punished by law; and that in countries where the voice of the people controls the hand of the legislature, there is a great dread of making _defamation_, especially of the government, an offence at law.

Private Ethics is not liable to the same difficulties as Legislation in dealing with such offences.

Of the three departments of Moral Duty--Prudence, Probity, and Beneficence--the one that least requires and admits of being enforced by legislative punishment is the first--_Prudence_. It can only be through some defect of the understanding, if people are wanting in duty to themselves. Now, although a man may know little of himself, is it certain the legislator knows more? Would it be possible to extirpate drunkenness or fornication by legal punishment? All that can be done in this field is to subject the offences, in cases of notoriety, to a slight censure, so as to cover them with a slight shade of artificial disrepute, and thus give strength and influence to the moral sanction.

Legislators have, in general, carried their interference too far in this cla.s.s of duties; and the mischief has been most conspicuous in religion. Men, it is supposed, are liable to errors of judgment; and for these it is the determination of a Being of infinite benevolence to punish them with an infinity of torments. The legislator, having by his side men perfectly enlightened, unfettered, and unbia.s.sed, presumes that he has attained by their means the exact truth; and so, when he sees his people ready to plunge headlong into an abyss of fire, shall he not stretch forth his hand to save them?

The second cla.s.s of duties--the rules of _Probity_, stand most in need of the a.s.sistance of the legislator. There are few cases where it _would_ be expedient to punish a man for hurting himself, and few where it _would not_ be expedient to punish a man for hurting his neighbour.

As regards offences against property, private ethics presupposes legislation, which alone can determine what things are to be regarded as each man's property. If private ethics takes a different view from the legislature, it must of course act on its own views.

The third cla.s.s of duties--_Beneficence_--must be abandoned to the jurisdiction of private ethics. In many cases the beneficial quality of an act depends upon the disposition of the agent, or the possession by him of the extra-regarding motives--sympathy, amity, and reputation; whereas political action can work only through the self-regarding motives. In a word these duties must be _free_ or _voluntary_. Still, the limits of law on this head might be somewhat extended; in particular, where a man's person is in danger, it might be made the duty of every one to save him from mischief, no less than to abstain from bringing it on him.

To resume the Ethics of Bentham. I.--The Standard or End of Morality is the production of Happiness, or Utility.

Bentham is thus at one in his first principle with Hume and with Paley; his peculiarity is to make it fruitful in numerous applications both to legislation and to morals. He carries out the principle with an unflinching rigour, and a logical force peculiarly his own.

II.--His Psychological a.n.a.lysis is also studied and thorough-going.

He is the first person to provide a cla.s.sification of pleasures and pains, as an indispensable preliminary alike to morals and to legislation. The ethical applications of these are of less importance than the legislative; they have a direct and practical bearing upon the theory of Punishment.

He lays down, as the const.i.tuents of the Moral Faculty, Good-will or Benevolence, the love of Amity, the love of Reputation, and the dictates of Religion--with a view to the Happiness of others; and Prudence--with a view to our own happiness. He gives no special account of the acquired sentiment of Obligation or Authority--the characteristic of Conscience, as distinguished from other impulses having a tendency to the good of others or of self. And yet it is the peculiarity of his system to identify morality with law; so that there is only one step to connecting conscience with our education under the different sanctions--legal and ethical.

He would of course give a large place to the Intellect or Reason in making up the Moral Faculty, seeing that the consequences of actions have to be estimated or judged; but he would regard this as merely co-operating with our sensibilities to pleasure and pain.

The Disinterested Sentiment is not regarded by Bentham. as arising from any disposition to pure self-sacrifice. He recognizes _Pleasures_ of Benevolence and _Pains_ of Benevolence; thus const.i.tuting a purely interested motive for doing good to others. He describes certain pleasures of Imagination or Sympathy arising through a.s.sociation--the idea of plenty, the idea of the happiness of animals, the idea of health, the idea of grat.i.tude. Under the head of Circ.u.mstances influencing Sensibility, he adverts to Sympathetic Sensibility, as being the propensity to derive _pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the unhappiness, of other sensitive beings_. It cannot but be admitted, he says, that the only interest that a man at all times, and on all occasions, is sure to find _adequate_ motives for consulting, is his own. He has no metaphysics of the Will. He uses the terms _free_ and _voluntary_ only with reference to spontaneous beneficence, as opposed to the compulsion of the law.

III.--As regards Happiness, or the Summum Bonum, he presents his scientific cla.s.sification of Pleasures and Pains, without, however, indicating any plan of life, for attaining the one and avoiding the other in the best manner. He makes no distinction among pleasures and pains excepting what strictly concerns their value as such--intensity, duration, certainty, and nearness. He makes happiness to mean only the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. The renunciation of pleasure for any other motive than to procure a greater pleasure, or avoid a greater pain, he, disapprovingly, terms asceticism.

IV.--It being the essence of his system to consider Ethics as a Code of Laws directed by Utility, and he being himself a law reformer on the greatest scale, we might expect from him suggestions for the improvement of Ethics, as well as for Legislation and Jurisprudence.

His inclusion of the interests of the lower animals has been mentioned.

He also contends for the partly legislative and partly ethical innovation of Freedom of Divorce.

The inducements to morality are the motives a.s.signed as working in its favour.

V.--The connexions of Ethics with Politics, the points of agreement and the points of difference of the two departments, are signified with unprecedented care and precision (Chap. XVII.)

VI.--As regards the connexions with Theology, he gives no uncertain sound. It is on this point that he stands in marked contrast to Paley, who also professes Utility as his ethical foundation.

He recognizes religion as furnishing one of the Sanctions of morality, although often perverted into the enemy of utility. He considers that the state may regard as offences any acts that tend to diminish or misapply the influence of religion as a motive to civil obedience.

While Paley makes a conjoined reference to Scripture and to Utility in ascertaining moral rules, Bentham insists on Utility alone as the final appeal. He does not doubt that if we had a clear unambiguous statement of the divine will, we should have a revelation of what is for human happiness; but he distrusts all interpretations of scripture, unless they coincide with a perfectly independent scientific investigation of the consequences of actions.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. [1765-1832.]

In the 'Dissertation on the progress of Ethical Philosophy chiefly during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,' Mackintosh advocates a distinct Ethical theory. His views and arguments occur partly in the course of his criticism of the other moralists, and partly in his concluding General Remarks (Section VII.).

In Section I., ent.i.tled PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS, he remarks on the universality of the distinction between Right and Wrong. On no subject do men, in all ages, coincide on so many points as on the general rules of conduct, and the estimable qualities of character. Even the grossest deviations may be explained by ignorance of facts, by errors with respect to the consequences of actions, or by inconsistency with admitted principles. In tribes where new-born infants are exposed, the abandonment of parents is condemned; the betrayal and murder of strangers is condemned by the very rules of faith and humanity, acknowledged in the case of countrymen.

He complains that, in the enquiry as to the foundation of morals, the two distinct questions--as to the Standard and the Faculty--have seldom been fully discriminated. Thus, Paley opposes Utility to a Moral Sense, not perceiving that the two terms relate to different subjects; and Bentham repeats the mistake. It is possible to represent Utility as the _criterion_ of Right, and a Moral Sense as the _faculty_. In another place, he remarks that the schoolmen failed to draw the distinction.

In Section V., ent.i.tled 'Controversies concerning the Moral Faculty and the Social Affections,' and including the Ethical theories coming between Hobbes and Butler, namely, c.u.mberland, Cudworth, Clarke, &c., he gives his objections to the scheme that founds moral distinctions solely on the Reason. Reason, as such, can never be a motive to action; an argument to dissuade a man from drunkenness must appeal to the pains of ill-health, poverty, and infamy, that is, to Feelings. The influence of Reason is indirect; it is merely a channel whereby the objects of desire are brought into view, so as to operate on the Will.

The abused extension of the term Reason to the moral faculties, he ascribes to the obvious importance of Reason in choosing the means of action, as well as in balancing the ends, during which operation the feelings are suspended, delayed, and poised in a way favourable to our lasting interests. Hence the ant.i.thesis of Reason and Pa.s.sion.

In remarking upon Leibnitz's view of Disinterested Sentiment, and the coincidence of Virtue with Happiness, he sketches his own opinion, which is that although every virtuous _act_ may not lead to the greater happiness of the agent, yet the _disposition_ to virtuous acts, in its intrinsic pleasures, far outweighs all the pains of self-sacrifice that it can ever occasion. 'The whole sagacity and ingenuity of the world may be fairly challenged to point out a case in which virtuous dispositions, habits, and feelings are not conducive in the highest degree to the happiness of the individual; or to maintain that he is not the happiest, whose moral sentiments and affections are such as to prevent the possibility of any unlawful advantage being presented to his mind.'

Section VI. is ent.i.tled 'Foundations of a more Just Theory of Ethics,'

and embraces a review of all the Ethical writers, from Butler downwards. The most palpable defect in Butler's scheme, is that it affords no answer to the question, 'What is the distinguishing quality of right actions?' in other words, What is the Standard? There is a vicious circle in answering that they are commanded by Conscience, for Conscience itself can be no otherwise defined than as the faculty that approves and commands right actions. Still, he gives warm commendation to Butler generally; in connexion with him he takes occasion to give some farther hints as to his own opinions. Two positions are here advanced: 1st, The moral sentiments, in their mature state, are a cla.s.s of feelings with no other objects than _the dispositions to voluntary actions_, and _the actions flowing from these dispositions_. We approve some dispositions and actions, and disapprove others; we desire to cultivate them, and we aim at them for _something in themselves_. This position receives light from the doctrine above quoted as to the supreme happiness of virtuous dispositions. His second position is that Conscience _is an acquired principle_; which he repeats and unfolds in subsequent places.

He finds fault with Hume for ascribing Virtue to qualities of the Understanding, and considers that this is to confound admiration with moral approbation. Hume's general Ethical doctrine, that Utility is a uniform ground of moral distinction, he says can never be impugned until some example be produced of a virtue generally pernicious, or a vice generally beneficial. But as to the theory of moral approbation, or the nature of the Faculty, he considers that Hume's doctrine of Benevolence (or, still better, Sympathy) does not account for our approbation of temperance and fort.i.tude, nor for the _supremacy_ of the Moral Faculty over all other motives.

He objects to the theory of Adam Smith, that no allowance is made in it for the transfer of our feelings, and the disappearing of the original reference from the view. Granting that our approbation began in sympathy, as Smith says, certain it is, that the adult man approves actions and dispositions as right, while he is distinctly aware that no process of sympathy intervenes between the approval and its object. He repeats, against Smith, the criticism on Hume, that the sympathies have no _imperative_ character of supremacy. He further remarks that the reference, in our actions, to the point of view of the spectator, is rather an expedient for preserving our impartiality than a fundamental principle of Ethics. It nearly coincides with the Christian precept of doing unto others as we would they should do unto us,--an admirable practical maxim, but, as Leibnitz has said truly, intended only as a correction of self-partiality. Lastly, he objects to Smith, that his system renders all morality relative to the pleasure of our coinciding in feeling with others, which is merely to decide on the Faculty, without considering the Standard. Smith shrinks from Utility as a standard, or ascribes its power over our feelings to our sense of the adaptation of means to ends.

He commends Smith for grounding Benevolence on Sympathy, whereas Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume had grounded Sympathy on Benevolence.

It is in reviewing Hartley, whose distinction it was to open up the wide capabilities of the principle of a.s.sociation, that Mackintosh develops at greatest length his theory of the derived nature of Conscience.

Adverting to the usual example of the love of money, he remarks that the benevolent man might begin with an interested affection, but might end with a disinterested delight in doing good. Self-love, or the principle of permanent well-being, is gradually formed from the separate appet.i.tes, and is at last pursued without having them specially in view. So Sympathy may perhaps be the transfer, first, of our own personal feelings to other beings, and next, of their feelings to ourselves, thereby engendering the social affections. It is an ancient and obstinate error of philosophers to regard these two principles--Self-love and Sympathy--as the _source_ of the impelling pa.s.sions and affections, instead of being the last results of them.

The chief elementary feelings that go to const.i.tute the moral sentiments appear to be Grat.i.tude, Pity, Resentment, and Shame. To take the example of Grat.i.tude. Acts of beneficence to ourselves give us pleasure; we a.s.sociate this pleasure with the benefactor, so as to regard him with a feeling of complacency; and when we view other beneficent beings and acts there is awakened within us our own agreeable experience. The process is seen in the child, who contracts towards the nurse or mother all the feelings of complacency arising from repeated pleasures, and extends these by similarity to other resembling persons. As soon as complacency takes the form of _action_, it becomes (according to the author's theory, connecting conscience with will), a part of the Conscience. So much for the development of Grat.i.tude. Next as to Pity. The likeness of the outward signs of emotion makes us transfer to others our own feelings, and thereby becomes, even more than grat.i.tude, a source of benevolence; being one of the first motives to impart the benefits connected with affection.

In our sympathy with the sufferer, we cannot but approve the actions that relieve suffering, and the dispositions that prompt them. We also enter into his Resentment, or anger towards the causes of pain, and the actions and dispositions corresponding; and this sympathetic anger is at length detached from special cases and extended to all wrong-doers; and is the root of the most indispensable compound of our moral faculties, the 'Sense of Justice.'

To these internal growths, from Grat.i.tude, Pity, and Resentment, must be added the education by means of well-framed penal laws, which are the lasting declaration of the moral indignation of mankind. These laws may be obeyed as mere compulsory duties; but with the generous sentiments concurring, men may rise above duty to _virtue_, and may contract that excellence of nature whence acts of beneficence flow of their own accord.

He next explains the growth of Remorse, as another element of the Moral Sense. The abhorrence that we feel for bad actions is extended to the agent; and, in spite of certain obstacles to its full manifestation, that abhorrence is prompted when the agent is self.

The theory of derivation is bound to account for the fact, recognized in the language of mankind, that the Moral Faculty is ONE. The principle of a.s.sociation would account for the fusion of many different sentiments into one product, wherein the component parts would cease to be discerned; but this is not enough. Why do these particular sentiments and no others coalesce in the total--Conscience. The answer is what was formerly given with reference to Butler; namely, while all other feelings relate to outward objects, the feelings brought together in conscience, contemplate exclusively _the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents_. Conscience is thus an acquired faculty, but one that is _universally and necessarily_ acquired.