CHAPTER XI._Hume (English Men of Letters Series)

THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS.

In his autobiography, Hume writes:--

"In the same year [1752] was published at London my _Inquiry

Concerning the Principles of Morals_; which in my own opinion (who

ought not to judge on that subject) is of all my writings,

historical, philosophical, and literary, incomparably the best. It

came unnoticed and unobserved into the world."

It may commonly be noticed that the relative value which an author

ascribes to his own works rarely agrees with the estimate formed of them

by his readers; who criticise the products, without either the power or

the wish to take into account the pains which they may have cost the

producer. Moreover, the clear and dispassionate common sense of the

_Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_ may have tasted flat after

the highly-seasoned _Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding_.

Whether the public like to be deceived, or not, may be open to question;

but it is beyond a doubt that they love to be shocked in a pleasant and

mannerly way. Now Hume's speculations on moral questions are not so

remote from those of respectable professors, like Hutcheson, or saintly

prelates, such as Butler, as to present any striking novelty. And they

support the cause of righteousness in a cool, reasonable, indeed

slightly patronising fashion, eminently in harmony with the mind of the

eighteenth century; which admired virtue very much, if she would only

avoid the rigour which the age called fanaticism, and the fervour which

it called enthusiasm.

Having applied the ordinary methods of scientific inquiry to the

intellectual phenomena of the mind, it was natural that Hume should

extend the same mode of investigation to its moral phenomena; and, in

the true spirit of a natural philosopher, he commences by selecting a

group of those states of consciousness with which every one's personal

experience must have made him familiar: in the expectation that the

discovery of the sources of moral approbation and disapprobation, in

this comparatively easy case, may furnish the means of detecting them

where they are more recondite.

"We shall analyse that complication of mental qualities which form

what, in common life, we call PERSONAL MERIT: We shall consider

every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either

of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or

sentiment or faculty, which if ascribed to any person, implies

either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or satire

of his character and manners. The quick sensibility which, on this

head, is so universal among mankind, gives a philosopher sufficient

assurance that he can never be considerably mistaken in framing the

catalogue, or incurs any danger of misplacing the objects of his

contemplation: He needs only enter into his own breast for a

moment, and consider whether he should or should not desire to have

this or that quality assigned to him, and whether such or such an

imputation would proceed from a friend or an enemy. The very nature

of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgment of

this nature; and as every tongue possesses one set of words which

are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least

acquaintance with the idiom suffices, without any reasoning, to

direct us in collecting and arranging the estimable or blamable

qualities of men. The only object of reasoning is to discover the

circumstances on both sides, which are common to these qualities;

to observe that particular in which the estimable qualities agree

on the one hand, and the blamable on the other, and thence to reach

the foundation of ethics, and find their universal principles, from

which all censure or approbation is ultimately derived. As this is

a question of fact, not of abstract science, we can only expect

success by following the experimental method, and deducing general

maxims from a comparison of particular instances. The other

scientifical method, where a general abstract principle is first

established, and is afterwards branched out into a variety of

inferences and conclusions, may be more perfect in itself, but

suits less the imperfection of human nature, and is a common source

of illusion and mistake, in this as well as in other subjects. Men

are now cured of their passion for hypotheses and systems in

natural philosophy, and will hearken to no arguments but those

which are derived from experience. It is full time they should

attempt a like reformation in all moral disquisitions; and reject

every system of ethics, however subtile or ingenious, which is not

founded on fact and observation."--(IV. pp. 242-4.)

No qualities give a man a greater claim to personal merit than

benevolence and justice; but if we inquire why benevolence deserves so

much praise, the answer will certainly contain a large reference to the

utility of that virtue to society; and as for justice, the very

existence of the virtue implies that of society; public utility is its

sole origin; and the measure of its usefulness is also the standard of

its merit. If every man possessed everything he wanted, and no one had

the power to interfere with such possession; or if no man desired that

which could damage his fellow-man, justice would have no part to play

in the universe. But as Hume observes:--

"In the present disposition of the human heart, it would perhaps be

difficult to find complete instances of such enlarged affections;

but still we may observe that the case of families approaches

towards it; and the stronger the mutual benevolence is among the

individuals, the nearer it approaches, till all distinction of

property be in a great measure lost and confounded among them.

Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws

supposed so strong, as to abolish all division of possessions, and

has often, in reality, the force assigned to it.[45] And it is

observable that, during the ardour of new enthusiasms, when every

principle is inflamed into extravagance, the community of goods has

frequently been attempted; and nothing but experience of its

inconveniences, from the returning or disguised selfishness of men,

could make the imprudent fanatics adopt anew the ideas of justice

and separate property. So true is it that this virtue derives its

existence entirely from its necessary _use_ to the intercourse and

social state of mankind."--(IV. p. 256.)

"Were the human species so framed by nature as that each individual

possessed within himself every faculty requisite both for his own

preservation and for the propagation of his kind: Were all society

and intercourse cut off between man and man by the primary

intention of the Supreme Creator: It seems evident that so solitary

a being would be as much incapable of justice as of social

discourse and conversation. Where mutual regard and forbearance

serve to no manner of purpose, they would never direct the conduct

of any reasonable man. The headlong course of the passions would be

checked by no reflection on future consequences. And as each man

is here supposed to love himself alone, and to depend only on

himself and his own activity for safety and happiness, he would, on

every occasion, to the utmost of his power, challenge the

preference above every other being, to none of which he is bound by

any ties, either of nature or of interest.

"But suppose the conjunction of the sexes to be established in

nature, a family immediately arises; and particular rules being

found requisite for its subsistence, these are immediately

embraced, though without comprehending the rest of mankind within

their prescriptions. Suppose that several families unite together

in one society, which is totally disjoined from all others, the

rules which preserve peace and order enlarge themselves to the

utmost extent of that society; but becoming then entirely useless,

lose their force when carried one step further. But again, suppose

that several distinct societies maintain a kind of intercourse for

mutual convenience and advantage, the boundaries of justice still

grow larger, in proportion to the largeness of men's views and the

force of their mutual connexion. History, experience, reason,

sufficiently instruct us in this natural progress of human

sentiments, and in the gradual enlargement of our regard to justice

in proportion as we become acquainted with the extensive utility of

that virtue."--(IV. pp. 262-4.)

The moral obligation of justice and the rights of property are by no

means diminished by this exposure of the purely utilitarian basis on

which they rest:--

"For what stronger foundation can be desired or conceived for any

duty, than to observe that human society, or even human nature,

could not subsist without the establishment of it, and will still

arrive at greater degrees of happiness and perfection, the more

inviolable the regard is which is paid to that duty?

"The dilemma seems obvious: As justice evidently tends to promote

public utility, and to support civil society, the sentiment of

justice is either derived from our reflecting on that tendency, or,

like hunger, thirst, and other appetites, resentment, love of life,

attachment to offspring, and other passions, arises from a simple

original instinct in the human heart, which nature has implanted

for like salutary purposes. If the latter be the case, it follows

that property, which is the object of justice, is also

distinguished by a simple original instinct, and is not ascertained

by any argument or reflection. But who is there that ever heard of

such an instinct? Or is this a subject in which new discoveries can

be made? We may as well expect to discover in the body new senses

which had before escaped the observation of all mankind."--(IV. pp.

273, 4.)

The restriction of the object of justice to property, in this passage,

is singular. Pleasure and pain can hardly be included under the term

property, and yet justice surely deals largely with the withholding of

the former, or the infliction of the latter, by men on one another. If a

man bars another from a pleasure which he would otherwise enjoy, or

actively hurts him without good reason, the latter is said to be injured

as much as if his property had been interfered with. Here, indeed, it

may be readily shown, that it is as much the interest of society that

men should not interfere with one another's freedom, or mutually inflict

positive or negative pain, as that they should not meddle with one

another's property; and hence the obligation of justice in such matters

may be deduced. But, if a man merely thinks ill of another, or feels

maliciously towards him without due cause, he is properly said to be

unjust. In this case it would be hard to prove that any injury is done

to society by the evil thought; but there is no question that it will be

stigmatised as an injustice; and the offender himself, in another frame

of mind, is often ready enough to admit that he has failed to be just

towards his neighbour. However, it may plausibly be said, that so slight

a barrier lies between thought and speech, that any moral quality

attached to the latter is easily transferred to the former; and that,

since open slander is obviously opposed to the interests of society,

injustice of thought, which is silent slander, must become inextricably

associated with the same blame.

But, granting the utility to society of all kinds of benevolence and

justice, why should the quality of those virtues involve the sense of

moral obligation?

Hume answers this question in the fifth section, entitled, _Why Utility

Pleases_. He repudiates the deduction of moral approbation from

self-love, and utterly denies that we approve of benevolent or just

actions because we think of the benefits which they are likely to confer

indirectly on ourselves. The source of the approbation with which we

view an act useful to society must be sought elsewhere; and, in fact, is

to be found in that feeling which is called sympathy.

"No man is absolutely indifferent to the happiness and misery of

others. The first has a natural tendency to give pleasure, the

second pain. This every one may find in himself. It is not probable

that these principles can be resolved into principles more simple

and universal, whatever attempts may have been made for that

purpose."--(IV. p. 294, _Note_.)

Other men's joys and sorrows are not spectacles at which we remain

unmoved:--

" ... The view of the former, whether in its causes or effects,

like sunshine, or the prospect of well-cultivated plains (to carry

our pretensions no higher) communicates a secret joy and

satisfaction; the appearance of the latter, like a lowering cloud

or barren landscape, throws a melancholy damp over the imagination.

And this concession being once made, the difficulty is over; and a

natural unforced interpretation of the phenomena of human life will

afterwards, we hope, prevail among all speculative

inquirers."--(IV. p. 320.)

The moral approbation, therefore, with which we regard acts of justice

or benevolence rests upon their utility to society, because the

perception of that utility or, in other words, of the pleasure which

they give to other men, arouses a feeling of sympathetic pleasure in

ourselves. The feeling of obligation to be just, or of the duty of

justice, arises out of that association of moral approbation or

disapprobation with one's own actions, which is what we call conscience.

To fail in justice, or in benevolence, is to be displeased with oneself.

But happiness is impossible without inward self-approval; and, hence,

every man who has any regard to his own happiness and welfare, will find

his best reward in the practice of every moral duty. On this topic Hume

expends much eloquence.

"But what philosophical truths can be more advantageous to society

than these here delivered, which represent virtue in all her

genuine and most engaging charms, and make us approach her with

ease, familiarity, and affection? The dismal dress falls off, with

which many divines and some philosophers have covered her; and

nothing appears but gentleness, humanity, beneficence, affability;

nay, even at proper intervals, play, frolic, and gaiety. She talks

not of useless austerities and rigours, suffering and self-denial.

She declares that her sole purpose is to make her votaries, and all

mankind, during every period of their existence, if possible,

cheerful and happy; nor does she ever willingly part with any

pleasure but in hopes of ample compensation in some other period of

their lives. The sole trouble which she demands is that of just

calculation, and a steady preference of the greater happiness. And

if any austere pretenders approach her, enemies to joy and

pleasure, she either rejects them as hypocrites and deceivers, or

if she admit them in her train, they are ranked, however, among the

least favoured of her votaries.

"And, indeed, to drop all figurative expression, what hopes can we

ever have of engaging mankind to a practice which we confess full

of austerity and rigour? Or what theory of morals can ever serve

any useful purpose, unless it can show, by a particular detail,

that all the duties which it recommends are also the true interest

of each individual? The peculiar advantage of the foregoing system

seem to be, that it furnishes proper mediums for that

purpose."--(IV. p. 360.)

In this pæan to virtue, there is more of the dance measure than will

sound appropriate in the ears of most of the pilgrims who toil

painfully, not without many a stumble and many a bruise, along the rough

and steep roads which lead to the higher life.

Virtue is undoubtedly beneficent; but the man is to be envied to whom

her ways seem in anywise playful. And, though she may not talk much

about suffering and self-denial, her silence on that topic may be

accounted for on the principle _ça va sans dire_. The calculation of the

greatest happiness is not performed quite so easily as a rule of three

sum; while, in the hour of temptation, the question will crop up,

whether, as something has to be sacrificed, a bird in the hand is not

worth two in the bush; whether it may not be as well to give up the

problematical greater happiness in the future, for a certain great

happiness in the present, and

"Buy the merry madness of one hour

With the long irksomeness of following time."[46]

If mankind cannot be engaged in practices "full of austerity and

rigour," by the love of righteousness and the fear of evil, without

seeking for other compensation than that which flows from the

gratification of such love and the consciousness of escape from

debasement, they are in a bad case. For they will assuredly find that

virtue presents no very close likeness to the sportive leader of the

joyous hours in Hume's rosy picture; but that she is an awful Goddess,

whose ministers are the Furies, and whose highest reward is peace.

It is not improbable that Hume would have qualified all this as

enthusiasm or fanaticism, or both; but he virtually admits it:--

"Now, as virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account,

without fee or reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction which

it conveys, it is requisite that there should be some sentiment

which it touches; some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you

please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and

which embraces the one and rejects the other.

"Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of _reason_ and of

_taste_ are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of

truth and falsehood: The latter gives the sentiment of beauty and

deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects as they

really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other

has a productive faculty, and gilding and staining all natural

objects with the colours borrowed from internal sentiment, raises

in a manner a new creation. Reason being cool and disengaged, is no

motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from

appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining

happiness or avoiding misery. Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain,

and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to

action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition.

From circumstances and relations known or supposed, the former

leads us to the discovery of the concealed and unknown. After all

circumstances and relations are laid before us, the latter makes us

feel from the whole a new sentiment of blame or approbation. The

standard of the one, being founded on the nature of things, is

external and inflexible, even by the will of the Supreme Being: The

standard of the other, arising from the internal frame and

constitution of animals, is ultimately derived from the Supreme

Will, which bestowed on each being its peculiar nature, and

arranged the several classes and orders of existence."--(IV. pp.

376-7.)

Hume has not discussed the theological theory of the obligations of

morality, but it is obviously in accordance with his view of the nature

of those obligations. Under its theological aspect, morality is

obedience to the will of God; and the ground for such obedience is

two-fold; either we ought to obey God because He will punish us if we

disobey Him, which is an argument based on the utility of obedience; or

our obedience ought to flow from our love towards God, which is an

argument based on pure feeling and for which no reason can be given.

For, if any man should say that he takes no pleasure in the

contemplation of the ideal of perfect holiness, or, in other words, that

he does not love God, the attempt to argue him into acquiring that

pleasure would be as hopeless as the endeavour to persuade Peter Bell of

the "witchery of the soft blue sky."

In whichever way we look at the matter, morality is based on feeling,

not on reason; though reason alone is competent to trace out the effects

of our actions and thereby dictate conduct. Justice is founded on the

love of one's neighbour; and goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral

law, like the laws of physical nature, rests in the long run upon

instinctive intuitions, and is neither more nor less "innate" and

"necessary" than they are. Some people cannot by any means be got to

understand the first book of Euclid; but the truths of mathematics are

no less necessary and binding on the great mass of mankind. Some there

are who cannot feel the difference between the _Sonata Appassionata_,

and _Cherry Ripe_; or between a gravestone-cutter's cherub and the

Apollo Belvidere; but the canons of art are none the less acknowledged.

While some there may be, who, devoid of sympathy are incapable of a

sense of duty; but neither does their existence affect the foundations

of morality. Such pathological deviations from true manhood are merely

the halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of consciousness; and the

anatomist of the mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body

would ignore abnormal specimens.

And as there are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons and Raffaelles, in whom

the innate faculty for science or art seems to need but a touch to

spring into full vigour, and through whom the human race obtains new

possibilities of knowledge and new conceptions of beauty: so there have

been men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of duty and visions of

moral perfection, which ordinary mankind could never have attained;

though, happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a vision, which

lay beyond the reach of their dull imaginations, and count life well

spent in shaping some faint image of it in the actual world.

THE END

LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] Family affection in the eighteenth century may have been stronger

than in the nineteenth; but Hume's bachelor inexperience can surely

alone explain his strange account of the suppositions of the marriage

law of that day, and their effects. The law certainly abolished all

division of possessions, but it did so by making the husband sole

proprietor.

[46] Ben Jonson's _Cynthia's Revels_, act i.