In order to account for the facts it has to become sympathy with unfelt feelings.
54. It thus appears that though the virtue of an act means the pleasure which it causes to a spectator, and though this again arises from sympathy with imagined pleasure of the doer or others, yet the former may be a pleasure which no particular spectator at any given time does actually feel—he need only know that under other conditions on his part he would feel it—and the latter pleasure may be one either not felt at all by any existing person, or only felt as the opposite of the uneasiness with which society witnesses a departure from its general rules. Of the essential distinction between a feeling of pleasure or pain and a knowledge of the conditions under which a pleasure or pain is generally felt, Hume shows no suspicion; nor, while he admits that without substitution of the knowledge for the feeling there could be no general standard of praise or blame, does he ask himself what the quest for such a standard implies. As little does he trouble himself to explain how there can be such sympathy with an unfelt feeling—with a pleasure which no one actually feels but which is possible for posterity—as will explain our approval of the virtue which defies the world, and which is only assumed, for the credit of a theory, to bring pleasure to its possessor, because it certainly brings pleasure to no one else. For the ‘artificial’ virtue, however, of acts done in conformity with the ‘general scheme of justice,’ or other social conventions, he accounts at length in part II. of his Second Book—that entitled ‘Of Justice and Injustice.’
Can the distinction between the ‘moral’ and ‘natural’ be maintained by Hume? What is ‘artificial virtue’?
55. To a generation which has sufficiently freed itself from all ‘mystical’ views of law—which is aware that ‘natural right,’ if it means a right that existed in a ‘state of nature,’ is a contradiction in terms; that, since contracts could not be made, or property exist apart from social convention, any question about a primitive obligation to respect them is unmeaning—the negative side of this part of the treatise can have little interest. That all rights and obligations are in some sense ‘artificial,’ we are as much agreed as that without experience there can be no knowledge. The question is, how the artifice, which constitutes them, is to be understood, and what are its conditions. If we ask what Hume understood by it, we can get no other answer than that the artificial is the opposite of the natural. If we go on to ask for the meaning of the natural, we only learn that we must distinguish the senses in which it is opposed to the miraculous and to the unusual from that in which it is opposed to the artificial, [1] but not what the latter sense is. The truth is that, if the first book of Hume’s treatise has fulfilled its purpose, the only conception of the natural, which can give meaning to the doctrine that the obligation to observe contracts and respect property is artificial, must disappear. There are, we shall find, two different negations which in different contexts this doctrine conveys. Sometimes it means that such an obligation did not exist for man in a ‘state of nature,’i.e., as man was to begin with. But in that sense the law of cause and effect, without which there would be no nature at all, is, according to Hume, not natural, for it—not merely our recognition of it, but the law itself—is a habit of imagination, gradually formed. Sometimes it conveys an opposition to Clarke’s doctrine of obligation as constituted by certain ‘eternal relations and proportions,’ which also form the order of nature, and are other than, though regulative of, the succession of our feelings. Nature, however, having been reduced by Hume to the succession of our feelings, the ‘artifice,’ by which he supposes obligations to be formed, cannot be determined by opposition to it, unless the operation of motives, which explains the artifice, is something else than a succession of feelings. But that it is nothing else is just what it is one great object of the moral part of his treatise to show.
[1] Book II. part 1, sec. 2.
No ground for such distinction in relation between motive and act.
56. He is nowhere more happy than in exposing the fallacies by which ‘liberty of indifferency’—the liberty supposed to consist in a possibility of unmotived action—was defended. [1] Every act, he shows, is determined by a strongest motive, and the relation between motive and act is no other than that between any cause and effect in nature. In one case, as in the other, ‘necessity’ lies not in an ‘esse’ but in a ‘percipi.’ It is the ‘determination of the thought of any intelligent being, who considers ‘an act or event,’ to infer its existence from some preceding objects;’ [2] and such determination is a habit formed by, and having a strength proportionate to, the frequency with which certain phenomena—actions or events—have followed certain others. The weakness in this part of Hume’s doctrine lies, not in the assumption of an equal uniformity in the sequence of act upon motive with that which obtains in nature, but in his inability consistently to justify the assumption of an absolute uniformity in either case. When there is an apparent irregularity in the consequences of a given motive—when according to one ‘experiment’ action(a)follows upon it, according to another action(b), and so on—although ‘these contrary experiments are entirely equal, we remove not the notion of causes and necessity; but, supposing that the usual contrariety proceeds from the operation of contrary and concealed causes, we conclude that the chance or indifference lies only in our judgment on account of our imperfect knowledge, not in the things themselves, which are in every case equally necessary, though to appearance not equally constant or uniform.’ [3] But we have already seen that, if necessary connection were in truth only a habit arising from the frequency with which certain phenomena follow certain others, the cases of exception to a usual sequence, or in which the balance of chances did not incline one way more than another, could only so far weaken the habit. The explanation of them by the ‘operation of concealed causes’ implies, as he here says, an opposition of real necessity to apparent inconstancy, which, if necessity were such a habit as he says it is, would be impossible. [4] This difficulty, however, applying equally to moral and natural sequences, can constitute no difference between them. It cannot therefore be in the relation between motive and act that the followers of Hume can find any ground for a distinction between the process by which the conventions of society are formed, and that succession of feelings which he calls nature. May he then find it in the character of the motive itself by which the ‘invention’ of justice is to be accounted for? Is this other than a feeling determined by a previous, and determining a sequent, one? Not, we must answer, as Hume himself understood his own account of it, which is as follows:-
[1] Book II. part 3, secs. 1 and 2.
[2] Vol. II. p, 189. [Book II., part III., sec. II.]
[3] Ibid., p. 185. [Book II., part III., sec. I.]
[4] See Introduction to Vol. I. secs. 323 and 336.
Motive to artificial virtues.
57. He will examine, he says, ‘two questions, viz., concerning the manner in which the rules of justice are established by the artifice of men; and concerning the reasons which determine us to attribute to the observance or neglect of these rules a moral beauty and deformity.’ [1] Of the motives which he recognises (§ 45) it is clear that only two—‘benevolence’ and ‘interest’—can be thought of in this connection, and a little reflection suffices to show that benevolence cannot account for the artifice in question. Benevolence with Hume means either sympathy with pleasure—and this (though Hume could forget it on occasion) [2] must be a particular pleasure of some particular person—or desire for the pleasure of such sympathy. Even if a benevolence may be admitted, which is not a desire for pleasure at all but an impulse to please, still this can only be an impulse to please some particular person, and the only effect of thought upon it, which Hume recognises, is not to widen its object but to render it ‘interested.’ [3] ‘There is no such passion in human minds as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself.’ [4] The motive, then, to the institution of rules of justice cannot be found in general benevolence. [5] As little can it be found in private benevolence, for the person to whom I am obliged to be just may be an object of merited hatred. It is true that, ‘though it be rare to meet with one who loves any single person better than himself, yet ‘tis as rare to meet with one in whom all the kind affections, taken together, do not overbalance all the selfish’; but they are affections to his kinsfolk and acquaintance, and the generosity which they prompt will constantly conflict with justice. [6] ‘Interest,’ then, must be the motive we are in quest of. Of the ‘three species of goods which we are possessed of—the satisfaction of our minds, the advantages of our body, and the enjoyment of such possessions as we have acquired by our industry and good fortune’—the last only ‘may be transferred without suffering any loss or alteration; while at the same time there is not sufficient quantity of them to supply every one’s desires and necessities.’ Hence a special instability in their possession. Reflection on the general loss caused by such instability leads to a ‘tacit convention, entered into by all the members of a society, to abstain from each other’s possessions;’ and thereupon ‘immediately arise the ideas of justice and injustice; as also those of property, right, and obligation.’ It is not to be supposed, however, that the ‘convention’ is of the nature of a promise, for all promises presuppose it. ‘It is only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to regulate their conduct by certain rules;’ and this ‘general sense of common interest,’ it need scarcely be said, is every man’s sense of his own interest, as in fact coinciding with that of his neighbours. In short, ‘’tis only from the selfishness and confined generosity of man, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.’ [7]
[1] Book III. part 2, sec. 2.
[2] Cf. sec. 54.
[3] Cf. secs. 42, 43, and 46.
[4] Vol. II. p. 255. [Book III., part II., sec. I.]
[5] For the sense in which Hume did admit a ‘general benevolence,’ see sec. 41, note.
[6] Vol. II. pp. 256 and 260. [Book III., part II., sec. II.]
[7] Vol. II. pp. 261, 263, 268. [Book III., part II., sec. II.]
How artificial virtues become moral.
58. Thus the origin of rules of justice is explained, but the obligation to observe them so far appears only as ‘interested,’ not as ‘moral.’ In order that it may become ‘moral,’ a pleasure must be generally experienced in the spectacle of their observance, and a pain in that of their breach, apart from reference to any gain or loss likely to arise to the spectator himself from that observance or breach. In accounting for this experience Hume answers the second of the questions, proposed above. ‘To the imposition and observance of these rules, both in general and in every particular instance, men are at first induced only by a regard to interest; and this motive, on the first formation of society, is sufficiently strong and forcible. But when society has become numerous, and has increased to a tribe or nation, this interest is more remote; nor do men so readily perceive that disorder and confusion follow upon each breach of these rules, as in a more narrow and contracted society. But though, in our own actions, we may frequently lose sight of that interest which we have in maintaining order, and may follow a lesser and more present interest, we never fail to observe the prejudice we receive, either mediately or immediately, from the injustice of others…. Nay, when the injustice is so distant from us, as no way to affect our interest, it still displeases us, because we consider it as prejudicial to human society, and pernicious to every one that approaches the person guilty of it. We partake of their uneasiness bysympathy; and as everything which gives uneasiness in human actions, upon the general survey, is called vice, and whatever produces satisfaction, in the same manner, denominated virtue, this is the reason why the sense of moral good and evil follows upon justice and injustice. And though this sense, in the present case, be derived only from contemplating the actions of others, yet we fail not to extend it even to our own actions. Thegeneral rulereaches beyond those instances from which it arose, while at the same time we naturallysympathisewith others in the sentiments they entertain of us.’ [1]
[1] Vol. II. p. 271. [Book III., part II., sec. II.]
Interest and sympathy account for all obligations civil and moral.
59. To this account of the process by which rules of justice have not only come into being, but come to bind our ‘conscience’ as they do, the modern critic will be prompt to object that it is still affected by the ‘unhistorical’ delusions of the systems against which it was directed. In expression, at any rate, it bears the marks of descent from Hobbes, and, if read without due allowance, might convey the notion that society first existed without any sort of justice, and that afterwards its members, finding universal war inconvenient, said to themselves, ‘Go to; let us abstain from each other’s goods.’ It would be hard, however, to expect from Hume the full-blown terminology of development. He would probably have been the first to admit that rules of justice, as well as our feelings towards them, were not made but grew; and in his view of the ‘passions’ whose operation this growth exhibits, he does not seriously differ from the ordinary exponents of the ‘natural history’ of ethics. These passions, we have seen, are ‘Interest’ and ‘Sympathy,’ which with Hume only differ from the pleasures and desires we call ‘animal’ as any one of these differs from another—the pleasure of eating, for instance, from that of drinking, or desire for the former pleasure from desire for the latter. Nor do their effects in the regulation of society, and in the growth of ‘artificial’ virtues and vices, differ according to his account of them from sentiments which, because they ‘occur to us whether we will or no,’ he reckons purely natural, save in respect of the further extent to which the modifying influence of imagination—itself reacted on by language—must have been carried in order to their existence; and since this in his view is a merely ‘natural’ influence, there can only be a relative difference between the ‘artificiality’ of its more complex, and the ‘naturalness’ of its simpler, products. Locke’s opposition, then, of ‘moral’ to other good, on the ground that other than natural instrumentality is implied in its attainment, will not hold even in regard to that good which, it is admitted, would not be what it is,i.e., not a pleasure, but for the intervention of civil law.
What is meant by an action whichoughtto be done.
60. The doctrine, which we have now traversed, of ‘interested’ and ‘moral’ obligation, implicitly answers the question as to the origin and significance of the ethical copula ‘ought.’ It originally expresses, we must suppose, obligation by positive law, or rather by that authoritative custom in which (as Hume would probably have been ready to admit) the ‘general sense of common interest’ first embodies itself. In this primitive meaning it already implies an opposition between the ‘interest which each man has in maintaining order’ and his ‘lesser and more present interests.’ Its meaning will be modified in proportion as the direct interest in maintaining order is reinforced or superseded by sympathy with the general uneasiness which any departure from the rules of justice causes. And as this uneasiness is not confined to cases where the law is directly or in the letter violated, the judgment, that an actoughtto be done, not only need not imply a belief that the person, so judging, will himself gain anything by its being done or lose anything by its omission; it need not imply that any positive law requires it. Whether it is applicable to every act ‘causing pleasure on the mere survey’—whether the range of ‘imperfect obligation’ is as wide as that of moral sentiment—Hume does not make clear. That every action representing a quality ‘fitted to give immediate pleasure to its possessor’ should be virtuous—as according to Hume’s account of the exciting cause of moral sentiment it must be—seems strange enough, but it would be stranger that we should judge of it as an act whichoughtto be done. It is less difficult, for instance, to suppose that it is virtuous to be witty, than that one ought to be so. Perhaps it would be open to a disciple of Hume to hold that as, according to his master’s showing, an opposition between permanent and present interest is implied in the judgment of obligation as at first formed, so it is when the pleasure to be produced by an act, which gratifies moral sense, is remote rather than near, and a pleasure to others rather than to the doer, that the term ‘ought’ is appropriate to it.
Sense of morality no motive: When it seems so the motive is really pride.
61. But though Hume leaves some doubt on this point, he leaves none in regard to the sense in which alone any one can be said to do an actionbecause he ought. This must mean that he does it to avoid either a legal penalty or that pain of shame which would arise upon the communication through sympathy of such uneasiness as a contrary act would excite in others upon the survey. So far from its being true that an act, in order to be thoroughly virtuous, must be done for virtue’s sake, ‘no action can be virtuous or morally good unless there is some motive to produce it, distinct from the sense of its morality.’ [1] An act is virtuous on account of the pleasure which supervenes when it is contemplated as proceeding from a motive fitted to produce pleasure to the agent or to others. The presence of this motive, then, being the antecedent condition of the act’s being regarded as virtuous, the motive cannot itself have been a regard to the virtue. It may be replied, indeed, that though this shows ‘regard to virtue’ or ‘sense of morality’ to be not the primary or only virtuous motive, it does not follow that it cannot be a motive at all. An action cannot be prompted for the first time by desire for a pleasure which can only be felt as a consequence of the action having been done, but it may be repeated, after experience of this pleasure, from desire for its renewal. In like manner, since with Hume the ‘sense of morality’ is not a desire at all but an emotion, and an emotion which cannot be felt till an act of a certain kind has been done, it cannot be the original motive to such an action; but why may not desire for so pleasant an emotion, when once it has been experienced, lead to a repetition of the act? The answer to this question is that the pleasure of moral sentiment, as Hume thinks of it, is essentially a pleasure experienced by a spectator of an act who is other than the doer of it. If the doer and spectator were regarded as one person, there would be no meaning in the rule that the tendency to produce pleasure, which excites the sentiment of approbation, must be a tendency to produce it to the doer himself or others, as distinct from the spectator himself. Thus pleasure, in the specific form in which Hume would call it ‘moral sentiment,’ is not what any one could attain by his own action, and consequently cannot be a motive to action. Transferred by sympathy to the consciousness of the man whose act is approved, ‘moral sentiment’ becomes ‘pride,’ and desire for the pleasure of pride—otherwise called ‘love of fame’—is one of the ‘virtuous’ motives on which Hume dwells most. When an action, however, is done for the sake of any such positive pleasure, he would not allow apparently that the agent does it ‘from a sense of duty’ or ‘because he ought.’ He would confine this description to cases where the object was rather the avoidance of humiliation. ‘I ought’ means ‘it is expected of me.’ ‘When any virtuous motive or principle is common in human nature, a person who feels his heart devoid of that motive may hate himself’ (strictly, according to Hume’s usage of terms, ‘despise himself’) ‘on that account, and may perform the action without the motive from a certain sense of duty, in order to acquire by practice that virtuous principle, or at least to disguise to himself as much as possible his want of it.’ [2]
[1] Vol. II., p. 253. [Book III., part II., sec. I.]
[2] Vol. II., p. 253. [Book III., part II., sec. I.]
Distinction between virtuous and vicious motive does not exist for person moved.
62. What difference, then, we have finally to ask, does Hume leave between one motive and another, which can give any significance to the assertion that an act, to be virtuous, must proceed from a virtuous motive? When a writer has so far distinguished between motive and action as to tell us that the moral value of an action depends on its motive—which is what Hume is on occasion ready to tell us—we naturally suppose that any predicate, which he proceeds to apply to the motive, is meant to represent what it is in relation to the subject of it. It cannot be so, however, when Hume calls a motive virtuous. This predicate, as he explains, refers not to an ‘esse’ but to a ‘percipi;’ which means that it does not represent what the motive is to the person whom it moves, but a pleasant feeling excited in the spectator of the act. To the excitement of this feeling it is necessary that the action should not merely from some temporary combination of circumstances produce pleasure for that time and turn, but that the desire, to which the spectator ascribes it, should be one according to his expectation ‘fitted to produce pleasure to the agent or to others.’ In this sense only can Hume consistently mean that virtue in the motive is the condition of virtue in the act, and in this sense the qualification has not much significance for the spectator of the act, and none at all in relation to the doer. It has not much for the spectator, because, according to it, no supposed desire will excite his displeasure and consequently be vicious unless in its general operation it produces a distinct overbalance of pain to the subject of itandto others; [1] and by this test it would be more difficult to show that an unseasonable passion for reforming mankind wasnotvicious than that moderate lechery was so. It has no significance at all for the person to whom vice or virtue is imputed, because a difference in the results, which others anticipate from any desire that moves him to action, makes no difference in that desire, as he feels and is moved by it. To him, according to Hume, it is simply desire for the pleasure of which the idea is for the time most lively, and, being most lively, cannot but excite the strongest desire. In this—in the character which they severally bear for the subjects of them—the virtuous motive and the vicious are alike. Hume, it is true, allows that the subject of a vicious desire may become conscious through sympathy of the uneasiness which the contemplation of it causes to others, but if this sympathy were strong enough to neutralize the imagination which excites the desire, the desire would not move him to act. That predominance of anticipated pain over pleasure in the effects of a motive, which renders it vicious to the spectator, cannot be transferred to the imagination of the subject of it without making it cease to be his motive because no longer his strongest desire. A vicious motive, in short, would be a contradiction in terms, if that productivity of pain, which belongs to the motive in the imagination of the spectator, belonged to it also in the imagination of the agent.
[1] I write ‘AND to others,’ not ‘OR,’ because according to Hume the production of pleasure to the agent alone is enough to render an action virtuous, if it proceeds from some permanent quality. Thus an action could not be unmistakably vicious unless it tended to produce painbothto the doer and to others. If, though tending to bring pain to others, it had a contrary tendency for the agent himself, there would be nothing to decide whether the viciousness of the former tendency was, or was not, balanced by the virtuousness of the latter.
‘Consciousness of sin’ disappears.
63. Thus the consequence, which we found to be involved in Locke’s doctrine of motives, is virtually admitted by its most logical exponent. Locke’s confusions began when he tried to reconcile his doctrine with the fact of self-condemnation, with the individual’s consciousness of vice as a condition of himself; or, in his own words, to explain how the vicious man could be ‘answerable to himself’ for his vice. Consciousness of vice could only mean consciousness of pleasure wilfully foregone, and since pleasure could not be wilfully foregone, there could be no such consciousness. Hume, as we have seen, cuts the knot by disposing of the consciousness of vice, as a relation in which the individual stands to himself, altogether. A man’s vice is someone else’s displeasure with him, and, if we wish to be precise, we must not speak of self-condemnation or desire for excellence as influencing human conduct, but of aversion from the pain of humiliation and desire for the pleasure of pride—humiliation and pride of that sort of which each man’s sympathy with the feeling of others about him is the condition.
Only respectability remains; and even this not consistently accounted for.
64. That such a doctrine leaves large fields of human experience unexplained, few will now dispute. Wesley, Wordsworth, Fichte, Mazzini, and the German theologians, lie between us and the generation in which, to so healthy a nature as Hume’s, and in so explicit a form, it could be possible. Enthusiasm—religious, political, and poetic—if it has not attained higher forms, has been forced to understand itself better since the time when Shaftesbury’s thin and stilted rhapsody was its most intelligent expression. It is now generally agreed that the saint is not explained by being called a fanatic, that there is a patriotism which is not ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ and that we know no more about the poet, when we have been told that he seeks the beautiful, and that what is beautiful is pleasant, than we did before. This admitted, Hume’s Hedonism needs only to be clearly stated to be found ‘unsatisfactory.’ If it ever tends to find acceptance with serious people, it is through confusion with that hybrid, though beneficent, utilitarianism which finds the moral good in the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ without reflecting that desire for such an object, not being for a feeling of pleasure to be experienced by the subject of the desire, is with Hume impossible. Understood as he himself understood his doctrine, it is only ‘respectability’—the temper of the man who ‘naturally,’i.e., without definite expectation of ulterior gain, seeks to stand well with his neighbours—that it will explain; and this it can only treat as a fixed quantity. Taking for granted the heroic virtue, for which it cannot account, it still must leave it a mystery how the heroic virtue of an earlier age can become the respectability of a later one. Recent literary fashion has led us perhaps unduly to depreciate respectability, but the avowed insufficiency of a moral theory to explain anything beyond it may fairly entitle us to enquire whether it can consistently explain even that. The reason, as we have sufficiently seen, why Hume’s ethical speculation has such an issue is that he does not recognize the constitutive action of self-conscious thought. Misunderstanding our passivity in experience—unaware that it has no meaning except in relation to an object which thought itself projects, yet too clear-sighted to acquiesce in the vulgar notion of either laws of matter or laws of action, as simply thrust upon us from an unaccountable without—he seeks in the mere abstraction of passivity, of feeling which is a feeling of nothing, the explanation of the natural and moral world. Nature is a sequence of sensations, morality a succession of pleasures and pains. It is under the pressure of this abstraction that he so empties morality of its actual content as to leave only the residuum we have described. Yet to account even for this he has to admit such motives as ‘pride,’ ‘love,’ and ‘interest;’ and each of these, as we have shown, implies that very constitutive action of reason, by ignoring which he compels himself to reduce all morality to that of the average man in his least exalted moments. The formative power of thought, as exhibited in such motives, only differs in respect of the lower degree, to which it has fashioned its matter, from the same power as the source of the ‘desire for excellence,’ of the will autonomous in the service of mankind, of the forever (to us) unfilled ideal of a perfect society. It is because Hume de-rationalizes respectability, that he can find norationale, and therefore no room, for the higher morality. This might warn us that an ‘ideal’ theory of ethics tampers with its only sure foundation when it depreciates respectability; and if it were our business to extract a practical lesson from him, it would be that there is no other genuine ‘enthusiasm of humanity’ than one which has travelled the common highway of reason—the life of the good neighbour and honest citizen—and can never forget that it is still only on a further stage of the same journey. Our business, however, has not been to moralise, but to show that the philosophy based on the abstraction of feeling, in regard to morals no less than to nature, was with Hume played out, and that the next step forward in speculation could only be an effort to re-think the process of nature and human action from its true beginning in thought. If this object has been in any way attained, so that the attention of Englishmen ‘under five-and-twenty’ may be diverted from the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent among us to the study of Kant and Hegel, an irksome labour will not have been in vain.
T. H. Green.