7.3.2. Chap. II
Of those Systems which make Reason the Principle of Approbation
It is well known to have been the doctrine of Mr Hobbes, that
a state of nature is a state of war; and that antecedent to the
institution of civil government there could be no safe or
peaceable society among men. To preserve society, therefore,
according to him, was to support civil government, and to destroy
civil government was the same thing as to put an end to society.
But the existence of civil government depends upon the obedience
that is paid to the supreme magistrate. The moment he loses his
authority, all government is at an end. As self-preservation,
therefore, teaches men to applaud whatever tends to promote the
welfare of society, and to blame whatever is likely to hurt it;
so the same principle, if they would think and speak
consistently, ought to teach them to applaud upon all occasions
obedience to the civil magistrate, and to blame all disobedience
and rebellion. The very ideas of laudable and blamable, ought to
be the same with those of obedience and disobedience. The laws of
the civil magistrate, therefore, ought to be regarded as the sole
ultimate standards of what was just and unjust, of what was right
and wrong.
It was the avowed intention of Mr Hobbes, by propagating
these notions, to subject the consciences of men immediately to
the civil, and not to the ecclesiastical powers, whose turbulence
and ambition, he had been taught, by the example of his own
times, to regard as the principal source of the disorders of
society. His doctrine, upon this account, was peculiarly
offensive to theologians, who accorDingly did not fail to vent
their indignation against him with great asperity and bitterness.
It was likewise offensive to all sound moralists, as it supposed
that there was no natural distinction between right and wrong,
that these were mutable and changeable, and depended upon the
mere arbitrary will of the civil magistrate. This account of
things, therefore, was attacked from all quarters, and by all
sorts of weapons, by sober reason as well as by furious
declamation.
In order to confute so odious a doctrine, it was necessary to
prove, that antecedent to all law or positive institution, the
mind was naturally endowed with a faculty, by which it
distinguished in certain actions and affections, the qualities of
right, laudable, and virtuous, and in others those of wrong,
blamable, and vicious.
Law, it was justly observed by Dr Cudworth,[16] could not be
the original source of those distinctions; since upon the
supposition of such a law, it must either be right to obey it,
and wrong to disobey it, or indifferent whether we obeyed it, or
disobeyed it. That law which it was indifferent whether we obeyed
or disobeyed, could not, it was evident, be the source of those
distinctions; neither could that which it was right to obey and
wrong to disobey, since even this still supposed the antecedent
notions or ideas of right and wrong, and that obedience to the
law was conformable to the idea of right, and disobedience to
that of wrong.
Since the mind, therefore, had a notion of those distinctions
antecedent to all law, it seemed necessarily to follow, that it
derived this notion from reason, which pointed out the difference
between right and wrong, in the same manner in which it did that
between truth and falsehood: and this conclusion, which, though
true in some respects, is rather hasty in others, was more easily
received at a time when the abstract science of human nature was
but in its infancy, and before the distinct offices and powers of
the different faculties of the human mind had been carefully
examined and distinguished from one another. When this
controversy with Mr Hobbes was carried on with the greatest
warmth and keenness, no other faculty had been thought of from
which any such ideas could possibly be supposed to arise. It
became at this time, therefore, the popular doctrine, that the
essence of virtue and vice did not consist in the conformity or
disagreement of human actions with the law of a superior, but in
their conformity or disagreement with reason, which was thus
considered as the original source and principle of approbation
and disapprobation.
That virtue consists in conformity to reason, is true in some
respects, and this faculty may very justly be considered as, in
some sense, the source and principle of approbation and
disapprobation, and of all solid judgments concerning right and
wrong. It is by reason that we discover those general rules of
justice by which we ought to regulate our actions: and it is by
the same faculty that we form those more vague and indeterminate
ideas of what is prudent, of what is decent, of what is generous
or noble, which we carry constantly about with us, and according
to which we endeavour, as well as we can, to model the tenor of
our conduct. The general maxims of morality are formed, like all
other general maxims, from experience and induction. We observe
in a great variety of particular cases what pleases or displeases
our moral faculties, what these approve or disapprove of, and, by
induction from this experience, we establish those general rules.
But induction is always regarded as one of the operations of
reason. From reason, therefore, we are very properly said to
derive all those general maxims and ideas. It is by these,
however, that we regulate the greater part of our moral
judgments, which would be extremely uncertain and precarious if
they depended altogether upon what is liable to so many
variations as immediate sentiment and feeling, which the
different states of health and humour are capable of altering so
essentially. As our most solid judgments, therefore, with regard
to right and wrong, are regulated by maxims and ideas derived
from an induction of reason, virtue may very properly be said to
consist in a conformity to reason, and so far this faculty may be
considered as the source and principle of approbation and
disapprobation.
But though reason is undoubtedly the source of the general
rules of morality, and of all the moral judgments which we form
by means of them; it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to
suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be
derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the
experience of which the general rules are formed. These first
perceptions, as well as all other experiments upon which any
general rules are founded, cannot be the object of reason, but of
immediate sense and feeling. It is by finding in a vast variety
of instances that one tenor of conduct constantly pleases in a
certain manner, and that another as constantly displeases the
mind, that we form the general rules of morality. But reason
cannot render any particular object either agreeable or
disagreeable to the mind for its own sake. Reason may show that
this object is the means of obtaining some other which is
naturally either pleasing or displeasing, and in this manner may
render it either agreeable or disagreeable for the sake of
something else. But nothing can be agreeable or disagreeable for
its own sake, which is not rendered such by immediate sense and
feeling. If virtue, therefore, in every particular instance,
necessarily pleases for its own sake, and if vice as certainly
displeases the mind, it cannot be reason, but immediate sense and
feeling, which, in this manner, reconciles us to the one, and
alienates us from the other.
Pleasure and pain are the great objects of desire and
aversion: but these are distinguished not by reason, but by
immediate sense and feeling. If virtue, therefore, be desirable
for its own sake, and if vice be, in the same manner, the object
of aversion, it cannot be reason which originally distinguishes
those different qualities, but immediate sense and feeling.
As reason, however, in a certain sense, may justly be
considered as the principle of approbation and disapprobation,
these sentiments were, through inattention, long regarded as
originally flowing from the operations of this faculty. Dr
Hutcheson had the merit of being the first who distinguished with
any degree of precision in what respect all moral distinctions
may be said to arise from reason, and in what respect they are
founded upon immediate sense and feeling. In his illustrations
upon the moral sense he has explained this so fully, and, in my
opinion, so unanswerably, that, if any controversy is still kept
up about this subject, I can impute it to nothing, but either to
inattention to what that gentleman has written, or to a
superstitious attachment to certain forms of expression, a
weakness not very uncommon among the learned, especially in
subjects so deeply interesting as the present, in which a man of
virtue is often loath to abandon, even the propriety of a single
phrase which he has been accustomed to.
[16.]
Immutable Morality, l. 1.