Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 1 n. 1. Cf. the passage quoted from Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, below, p. 165. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 1 n. 2. Dissertation of Virtue. This change from the more rationalistic position of the Sermons was perhaps due to the influence of Hutcheson. He now uses the term moral sense as a synonym for Conscience. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 1 n. 3. The single act of conscience may be a feeling, an emotion, an impulse, or a judgment (Wundt, Ethics, Eng. Trans., vol. iii, p. 60). Wundt is surely wrong in making Conscience or συνείδησις mean originally a knowing with God, instead of an inner or self-knowledge. The word, it is significant to observe, is first found in the generation immediately after Aristotle--a period of great progress both in ethical feeling and ethical theory. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 2 n. 1. Exception may be taken in some quarters to the use of the word faculty at all in this connexion. The word has fallen into disfavour partly because by a certain school it has been used to suggest the idea of a definite number of mental activities sharply distinguishable from and independent of each other--planted, as Plato would have said, as it were in a wooden horse, to the ignoring of the unity of self-consciousness, and partly because the invention of a specific faculty has often taken the place of logical or psychological analysis of complicated mental processes. I hope I have sufficiently guarded myself against these mistakes. But to prescribe altogether the use of the word faculty is to fall into the very superstition which the denouncers of it have in view. Whatever we do, there must be a faculty or capacity (δύναμις of doing it. In asking what is the moral faculty, I mean only to ask by which of the distinguishable activities of the single self-conscious self our ideas of right and wrong are to be referred. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 2 n. 2. The not taking into consideration this authority, which is implied in the idea of reflex of approbation or disapprobation, seems a material deficiency or omission in Lord Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue. He has shewn beyond all contradiction that virtue is naturally the interest or happiness, and vice the misery of such a creature as man, placed in the circumstances which we are in this world. But suppose there are particular exceptions; a case which the author was unwilling to put…. Or suppose a case which he has put and determined, that of a skeptick not convinced of this happy tendency of virtue or being of a contrary opinion. His determination is, that it would be without remedy (Butler, Pref. to Fifteen Sermons). ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 2 n. 3. It may indeed be contended that there is an aesthetic, and therefore an objective, element even in gastronomic matters. If so, we must substitute some pleasure of a still more purely sensuous type. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 3 n. 1. This qualification of the axiom (not recognized by Utilitarians like Bentham or Sidgwick) I shall explain and defend in Chap. viii of this Book. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 3 n. 2. It is of course admitted by Kant that even the mathematical axioms in point of time are not prior to experience; his contention is that, when once there has been experience of space or number in general, their truth is seen independently of any particular fact or facts of experience--that the universal truth of the principle is implied or presupposed in each particular judgement about space or number. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 3 n. 3. Of course there is an objectivity even in the judgement of perception. My toothache as a feeling is purely subjective in the sense that I alone feel it. But my judgement I have a toothache claims objectivity. I mean that the man who denies is in error. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 3 n. 4. By experience is here meant of course experience in the sense of the Empiricists--mere sensible experience. There is no objection to saying that moral judgements are derived from experience if we include in the term experience the whole of our intellectual as well as our other psychical activities. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 1. What we normally call a desire I take to be a state of feeling and a certain state of will or conation combined. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 2. For, if we once suppose the general physical basis of animal life to be seriously altered, it is impossible to say to what extent the types of sentiment and action which, under present conditions, approve themselves as life-preserving and beneficial to the individual and the species would be still in place (Taylor, The Problem of Conduct, p. 41). Prof. Taylor's insistence that the details of duty would be different in different surroundings is quite justified, but he seems to me to think that this proves more than it does--that it altogether upsets any claim for objective validity or a rational character in our moral judgements. But (1) it is true that I may recognize that the ferocity of the tiger is as life-preserving and beneficial to its species as the charity of the Saint; yet I need not pronounce that it has the same intrinsic value: and (2) though the judgements as to right and wrong for human nature would be different if our physical constitution were altered, that does not show that every rational intelligence, in proportion as it is rational, would not pronounce the same course of conduct to be right for man as he is. And this is what we mean by treating the moral judgement as objective. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 3. Notre vrai guide n'est ni l'instinct, ni une pensée transcendante, c'est la réflexion sur l'instinct (Rauh, L'Expérience morale, p. 96). ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 4. Cf. Aristotle, Ethic. Nicomach. III. i. § 13 (p. 1110b) Ὁ γὰρ μεθύων ἢ ὀργιζόμενος οὐ δοκεῖ δι᾽ ἄγνοιαν πράττειν … ἀγνοεῖ μὲν οὖν πᾶς ὁ μοχθηρὸς ἃ δεῖ πράττειν καὶ ὧν ἀφεκτέον, καὶ διὰ τὴν τοιαύτην ἁμαρτίαν ἄδικοι καὶ ὅλως κακοὶ γίνονται: τὸ δ᾽ ἀκούσιον βούλεται λέγεσθαι οὐκ εἴ τις ἀγνοεῖ τὰ συμφέροντα· οὐ γὰρ ἡ ἐν τῇ προαιρέσει ἄγνοια αἰτία τοῦ ἀκουσίου ἀλλὰ τῆς μοχθηρίας. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 5. See Chap. vii. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 6. The researches of Prof. Westermarack (History of Human Marriage) tend to confirm Aristotle's dictum that man is τῃ̑ φύσει συνδυαστικὸν μα̑λλον ἢ πολιτικόν. This is proved partly by inference from the fact that the higher apes are monogamous, partly by a wide induction from anthropological and historical facts. Polyandry is rare, Polygamy a much more common institution, but both are exceptional arrangements due to special circumstances. The later work of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (The Native Tribes of Central Australia) may be held to modify Prof. Westermarack's conclusions, but the most that they point to is a system of group-marriages, not the sheer promiscuity of McLellan's speculations; and after all, even in those marriages, one husband occupies an exceptional position. Even here a tendency to Monogamy is discernible. The great difficulty experienced by otherwise successful free-love communities in America is the ineradicable tendency to form exclusive unions. But of course these facts are intended rather as an illustration than as a proof of the position taken up in the text. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 7. This authority is not necessarily or exclusively that of a religious creed, a religious teacher, or a religious community: but this is the most definite and conspicuous form which moral authority actually assumes in modern times. This dependence is, I believe, one explanation of the undoubted fact that this is a department of morality which is peculiarly liable to suffer from the decay of religious belief. ↩

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 8. Von Hartmann is one of the few idealistic Moralists who have adequately remembered this. Man, according to him, gets his notions of the End from the application of Reason to the actual course of events, including the subjective moral motives of men (aus der Anwendung der Vernunft auf den gesamten Weltlauf einschliesslich der subjektiven sittlichen Veranlagung der Menschen. Ethische Studien, p. 181). At the same time, when he goes on to call the process of arriving at the ideal end inductive, he seems to ignore the fundamental difference between recognizing a value in the various elements of which the end is made up, and that of merely asserting their actual existence. He seems sometimes (ib., p. 192) to fall into the mistake of trying to form a conception of the ethical end by induction from the actual empirically ascertained tendency of the Universe, the fallacy of which has been sufficiently pointed out by Mr. Herbert Spencer's critics. That moral Reason can deal with data which it cannot itself supply or create, no one (among ethical Rationalists) appreciates better than von Hartmann. Diese Norm ist ein Produkt der Vernunft, ein Ideal, welches zeigt, wie der Mensch eigentlich sein sollte. Aber dieses Ideal ist nicht ein systematisch aus irgend welchem anderen Prinzip abgeleitetes, sondern ein Komplex von unmittelbaren Gefühls- oder Geschmacksurteilen (ib., p. 94). He points out too that in time this reasonable criticism of, and selection, among our desires modifies the feelings themselves (ib., p. 199). The only point in this statement to which I should demur is that he seems disposed to identify the judgement of taste with mere feeling, which would leave to the Reason nothing but the function of collecting and combining the actual feelings of the judger--a mode of thought quite inconsistent with the whole of his powerful plea for an absolute or rational standard of Morality. Reason must not merely collect and systematize, but select and value the different elements of human experience. ↩

It is surprising to find how blind naturalistic Moralists continue to be to the fact that the real problem of Ethics is as to how we determine or ought to determine the ultimate end. This problem is wholly ignored in such works as M. Lévy-Bruhl's La Morale et la Science des mœurs (1904), the main idea of which is that the Science of the means to the end should be based upon Sociology (or a complex of sociological Sciences): how the end is to be discovered and what are the metaphysical implications of the idea of an end are questions which he does not ask. There is no indication in an otherwise clever work that its author is capable of even understanding their meaning.

Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 4 n. 9. Hume was right in insisting that in average human nature (apart from the influence of logical reflection or rational consideration) the qualities of the mind are selfishness and limited generosity (Treatise, Book III, Pt. ii, § 2). ↩