When the popular unwillingness to recognize the rational character of our moral perceptions assumes the form of a philosophical theory, it tends to pass either into a theory of a moral sense or into the theory of a moral faculty called Conscience which is represented as wholly sui generis--distinct alike from intellectual judgement and from any kind of feeling or emotion. Let us briefly examine each of these views.(Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 2 ¶ 1)

In the writings of John Locke the Rationalism of Cumberland and the Cambridge Platonists had degenerated into mere theological Utilitarianism. Locke continued to use the old language about Morality being rational; but in him that language had come to mean almost the opposite of what it was originally intended to mean. The appeal to Reason was intended as an answer to Hobbes, and now Reason was used in a sense in which Hobbes himself would have had no objection to base Morality upon it. By Reason was no longer meant a faculty which originates the idea of something intrinsically good in itself, and which pronounces what things are intrinsically good, but merely the faculty which connects ends and means^[118]. To Locke Virtue was rational because it could be demonstrated that without it a man will infallibly go to Hell. Hence in men like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson we find a recoil from a way of thinking which seemed to make Morality a mere matter of selfish calculation. It was thought that Morality would be all the safer if it were removed altogether from the jurisdiction of the intellect, and placed under the control of the heart. Moreover, these men shared, or at least had incompletely shaken off, the metaphysical presuppositions of the Master against whose Ethics they had revolted. Experience, by which was practically meant sensation, was regarded as the sole source of knowledge. If, therefore, Morality was to be shown to be something real, it must, it seemed, be revealed to us by some kind of feeling or sensation. Yet to base Morality upon the deliverances of the ordinary sensibility, upon the pleasures and pains of the bodily senses, meant of course Hedonism pure and simple. To avoid this consequence they invented a special sense which was to be the source of our moral knowledge, just as sight is the source of our colour-perceptions and hearing of our sound-perceptions. Morality was made to rest (like all our knowledge) upon a kind of feeling; only it was a specific feeling. Moral approbation was a feeling wholly sui generis, arising from the contemplation of good acts; disapprobation a feeling similarly arising from the contemplation of bad acts. Not to insist on the complete want of analogy between the bodily senses and this organless sense of Morality, all such schemes are open to one insuperable objection. If moral approbation is a mere feeling, how can it claim any superiority over other feelings? Granted that it gives me a pleasant feeling to do a kind action, and that it causes me a particular kind of discomfort to tell a lie, that may be a very good reason under normal circumstances for my doing the one and avoiding the other. But supposing I do not happen to be sensitive to this particular kind of feeling, or supposing I am so constituted that a violation of some social conventionality shocks me no more than a moral offence^[119], why should I attach any paramount importance to this particular feeling of moral disapprobation? I may have a certain capacity for the pleasures of whist, but I do not feel bound to play it if I like reading a novel better. If we grant that immorality does normally cause me mental or emotional distress and discomfort of a particular kind; still under particular circumstances Morality may cause me more pain and discomfort of another kind. I may dislike the pains of Conscience much, but I may dislike the thumbscrew more. Why am I bound, if threatened with torture for refusing to reveal a secret which I am bound to keep, or falsely to accuse an innocent man, to prefer the pleasures of an easy conscience to those of a whole skin and easy nerves? To insist o nthe specific character of the feeling in question is nothing to the point; the pleasures of whist-playing are different from those of touch or taste, but they are not necessarily superior to them. The taste of port is specifically different from that of sherry, but it is not necessarily superior to it. If it be said Oh! but you are inwardly conscious that these pleasures are superior in kind, and not merely in quality, to those of sense, that they ought to be attended to more than others, is not that really admiting that we have to do with something more than a mere feeling, with a dictate of Reason or a judgement of value? It is not the feeling which claims obedience, but the judgement which assigns a value to that feeling.(Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 2 ¶ 2)

Moreover, not only does a Moral Sense theory fail to supply any reason why the individual should accord to his own moral perceptions a primacy among the feelings and emotions of which his nature is capable, but it is totally unable to assign any universal validity to such moral perceptions. Inconsistent or contradictory feelings, qua feelings, are equally true and valid for those who feel them. When the colour-blind man calls the red light green or grey, it really is green or grey to him; his judgement is as true as that of the man who pronounces it red. Feelings as feelings are not true or false at all; while as to the judgements based upon them the judgement of A that he sees red and of B that he sees green, these no doubt possess objective validity, but such statements as to what two men actually feel are perfectly compatible with one another. Now, if a good act means simply an act which causes me to experience a particular kind of feeling which I call moral approbation, it is undeniable that such feelings are occasioned in different men by different, and even opposite, kinds of conduct. The pious fraud may occasion no less pleasure to the man brought up to regard such acts as right than a sacrifice made in the cause of truth will cause in the heart of another differently educated. A Spanish bull-fight excites feelings of enthusiastic approval in the minds of most Spaniards and feelings of lively disapproval in most Englishmen. Observe exactly where the difficulty lies. It is not the practical difficulty of ascertaining moral truth. Every ethical system has to admit that the Conscience of the individual is not infallible, that men's ethical judgements do as a matter of fact contradict one another. However strongly I feel that a certain course of conduct is right, I may make a mistake, just as I may make a mistake about a scientific or historical theory to wihch I may be no less passionately attached. The objectivity of the moral judgement does not mean the infallibility of the individual, or even of a general consensus of individuals at a particular time and place. What is meant is that if I am right in my approbation of this conduct, then, if you disapprove of it, you must be wrong. If Morality be a matter of objective truth or falsity, then the Moral Law remains unaffected, though you and I--nay, the whole human race in its present stage of moral development--may have erroneously conceived some of its provisions. But, if the goodness of an act means simply that the act occasions a specific emotion in particular men, then the same act may be at once and the same time good and bad. Moral feelings will have no more objective truth or validity than any other feelings which vary in their nature or intensity with the varying sensibility of different men's skins or sensory nerves. The bull-fight will be neither right nor wrong, but simply right to some people, wrong to others, just as mustard is neither objectively nice nor objectively nasty, but simply nice to some people, nasty to others^[120].(Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 2 ¶ 3)

It may perhaps be replied, These feelings are not what make things right or wrong; they are merely the subjective index by which we recognize the presence of an actual quality in the world of objective fact. This is no doubt what was really meant by the doctrine of Moral Sense in the hands of constructive Moralists like Hutcheson. A full reply to the objection would involve a discussion of the metaphysical system which it presupposes. No doubt if knowledge of any kind could be explained by mere feeling, Morality so explained would at least possess as much objectivity as the rest of our knowledge. Moral Sense theories are no more fatal to Morality than Sensationalism is to Science. I can only point out here that, just as all knowledge implies something more than feeling, so, if Morality is to possess any universal truth or validity, moral perceptions must be regarded as judgements. The specific moral feeling can be at most merely the occasion or index by which we are enabled to make the judgement, it cannot be its sole source; just as I cannot actually make the judgement that this triangle is larger than that without sensible experience, though there is more in the judgement than mere sense. The essential idea of good cannot come from feeling, though feeling may sometimes be psychologically the cause or occasion of my pronouncing this or that particular act to be right or good.(Bk. 1 Ch. 6 § 2 ¶ 4)