tion of this sense, we must approve." "' 1 In further defining this 'approbation' of the good, however, he does not exhibit Butler's tendency to explain it as a rational principle, but refers it "taste or relish "2 for certain affections and actions, and this he takes no pains to distinguish from pleasure.

to a

The analogy he seeks to draw between the moral sense and our other powers does not really favour a distinction of it from pleasure. "To each of our powers," he says, "we seem to have a corresponding taste or sense, recommending the proper use of it to the agent, and making him relish or value the like exercise of it by another. This we see as to the powers of voice, of imitation, designing, or machinery, motion, reasoning; there is a sense discerning or recommending the proper exercise of them." 3 That is to say, besides the sense of hearing, which has to do with sounds, there must needs be another sense which has to do with our way of hearing sounds; besides the sense of sight, which has to do with form and colour, there must needs be another sense which has to do with our way of perceiving form and colour; and so with every other activity, especially those which proceed from our highest powers.' A doctrine such as this sets no limits to the manufacture of additional Ibid., i. 59.

1 System, i. 53.

2 Ibid., i. 59.

senses.

The whole view of human nature upon which it proceeds is one of meaningless complexity, which serves the one good purpose only of showing how much ethics has suffered from a defective psychology.

The mental objects or presentations which are distinguished from one another by the difference of their characteristic qualities, and which we therefore call colours, or sounds, or movements, are accompanied by varying degrees of pleasurable or painful feeling; and it is possible to hold that the moral sense is a name for such feelings following in the train of those complexes of presentations to which we give the name of actions, or of those other more permanent complexes we call affections. This, practically, was the position with which Hutcheson started in the 'Inquiry.' Benevolence pleased us and selfishness pained us; just as the taste of sugar was pleasant, and that of wormwood unpleasant. Perhaps Hutcheson departed from this theory, because he saw that if conduct was made a matter of taste, there would be no sufficient reason for condemning selfishness any more than an unusual liking in food or drink. He therefore relinquished, or seems to have relinquished, the view of the moral sense as a feeling of pleasure or pain; and under the influence, probably, of Butler, spoke of it as approbation or disapprobation. But he fell back on his original

theory by making this approbation depend on 'a taste or relish,' which only lends itself to interpretation as a peculiar feeling of pleasure.

1

jects of the

be actions;

to be affec

The reflex nature of the moral sense is brought (8) The obout more distinctly in the 'System' than in the moral sense Inquiry.' In his earlier work, Hutcheson had first said to spoken of it as directly related to actions. But it was more consistent with its reflective character to regard it as having to do with mental powers or 'affections' in the first instance, and with actions afterwards only indirectly or mediately. "The object of this tions; sense," he says, "is not any external motion or action, but the inward affections or dispositions"; and this is made by him to account for the discrepancy which the deliverances of the moral sense show in regard to actions. It " approve and condemn uniformly the same immediate objects, the same affections and dispositions; though we reason very differently about the actions which evidence certain dispositions or their contraries." This distinction is applied with unlimited confidence in its efficacy. By means of it he would explain the most fundamental differences in the moral codes of men and nations. Thus people unacquainted with the industrial improvements which give the character of permanence to property, may see no harm in depriving men of their artificial

seems ever to

1 System, i. 97. The same view is implied in his Essay (1728), p. 276.

but its

grounds of

acquisitions and stores beyond their present use," —that is to say, "no evil may appear in theft." 1

But it is more important in another respect; for it enables the author to avoid the difficulty of finding a principle according to which the moral sense may be related to the empirical content of action. As long as the moral sense was simply spoken of as a feeling of pleasure, it could be conveniently regarded as the consequent of external actions. But if it is an internal sense distinct from pleasure, it is easier to relate it to what he calls our internal powers or affections than to action. The moral sense, then, is to be the regulator of all our powers: "its dignity and commanding nature we are immediately conscious of, as we are conscious of the power itself";2 and by means of it Hutcheson attempts to reduce human nature to a scale of morality.

It is to be noted that, in the classification he preference offers, what are commonly called the virtues of candour, veracity, &c., are accounted not as virtues themselves, but only as immediately connected with virtuous affections: these are identified with the 'kind' or benevolent affections, directed to the happiness of sentient beings. Within the latter

1 System, i. 93.

2 Ibid., i. 61.

3 Ibid., i. 68 ff. With this may be compared the elaborate classification of motives, according to their moral quality, in Dr Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory,' ii. 176 ff.

pend not on

there are two grounds of preference: the deliberate affections are preferred to the passionate; those which are more extensive in the range of their objects to the less extensive. With regard to the former ground of preference, the "moral sense" of the community has perhaps undergone some modification since Hutcheson's time, and looks upon enthusiasm with less suspicion than it formerly did. The other ground of preference ascribed to the moral sense refers not so much to the affection itself—which is the direct or immediate object of the moral sense- -as to the way in which the affection is applied, that is, the number of the objects mainly deto which it is directed. The affection of benevol- the nature ence is the same in nature whether its object be of the affecwide or restricted; though difference in this respect its objects. profoundly influences the actions to which it leads. The object approved or most approved by the moral sense is therefore, according to Hutcheson, utilitarian conduct, or rather, as he would say, the calm disposition leading thereto.1 In this way he obtains a principle for determining the morality of actions: but only through the arbitrary assertion that this principle is immediately approved by the moral sense. The connexion of the moral sense with an object such as universal benevolence, could only be made out by showing a rational, or at any rate an organic, union between individual sentiment and 1 System, i. 50,

tion, but on