The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f 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

351to 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 blameable, 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,

352was 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, blameable,

and vicious.

Law, it was justly observed by Dr. Cudworth,[23]

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.

23. Immutable Morality, l. 1.

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

353in 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 tenour 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,

354we 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 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 tenour 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

355is 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, is desirable for its own sake, and if

vice is, 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,

356but 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 loth to abandon, even the propriety of a

single phrase which he has been accustomed to.