pleasure--which must mean _imagined_ pleasure, since pleasure,
determined by conceptions, is excluded by the supposition that
pleasure alone is the ultimate motive, and pleasure in actual
enjoyment is no longer desired--the ‘suspense of desire,’ that he
speaks of, can only mean an interval, during which a competition of
imagined pleasures (one associated with more, another with less, of
sequent or antecedent pain) is still going on, and none has become
finally the strongest motive. Of such suspense it is unmeaning to
say that a man has ‘the power of it,’ or that, when it terminates in
an action which does not produce so much pleasure as another might
have done, it is because the man ‘has vitiated his palate,’ and that
therefore he must be ‘answerable to himself’ for the consequences.
This language really implies that pleasures, instead of being
ultimate ends, are determined to be ends through reference to an
object beyond them which the man himself constitutes; that it is
only through his conception of self that every pleasure--not indeed
best pleases him, or is most attractive in imagination--but becomes
his personal good. It may be that he identifies his personal good
with the pleasure most attractive in imagination; but a pleasure
so identified is quite a different motive from a pleasure simply
as imagined. It is no longer mere pleasure that the man seeks, but
self-satisfaction through the pleasure. The same consciousness of
self, which sets him on the act, continues through the act and its
consequences, carrying with it the knowledge (commonly called the
‘voice of conscience’) that it is to himself, as the ultimate motive,
that the act and its consequences, whether in the shape of natural
pains or civil penalties, are due--a knowledge which breeds remorse,
and, through it, the possibility of a better mind. Thus, when Locke
finds the ground of responsibility in a man’s power of suspending
his desire till he has considered whether the act, to which it
inclines him, is of a kind to make him happy or no, the value of the
explanation lies in the distinction which it may be taken to imply,
but which Locke could not consistently admit, between the imagination
of pleasure and the conception of self as a permanent subject of
happiness, by reference to which an imagined pleasure becomes a
strongest motive. It is not really as involving a comparison between
imagined pleasures, but as involving the consideration whether the
greatest imagined pleasure will be the best for one in the long
run, that the suspense of desire establishes the responsibility of
man. Even if we admitted with Locke that nothing entered into the
consideration but an estimate of ‘future pleasures’--and Locke, it
will be observed, by supposing the estimate to include ‘pleasures
of a sort we are unacquainted with,’ [1] which is as much of a
contradiction as to suppose a man influenced by unfelt feelings,
renders this restriction unmeaning--still to be determined by the
consideration whether something is good for me on the whole is to be
determined, not by the imagination of pleasure, but by the conception
of self, though it be of self only as a subject to be pleased.
[1] Cap. 21, sec. 65. He has specially in view the pleasures of
‘another life’, which ‘being intended for a state of happiness, must
certainly be agreeable to every one’s wish and desire: could we
suppose their relishes as different there as they are here, yet the
manna in heaven will suit every one’s palate.’
Locke finds moral freedom in necessity of pursuing happiness.
15. The mischief is that, though his language implies this
distinction, he does not himself understand it. ‘The care of
ourselves,’ he tells us, ‘that we mistake not imaginary for real
happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger
ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which
is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow,
the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will
to any particular action, till we have examined whether it has a
tendency to, or is inconsistent with, our real happiness.’ [1] But he
does not see that the _rationale_ of the freedom, thus paradoxically,
though truly, placed in the strength of a tie, lies in that
determination by the conception of self to which the ‘unalterable
pursuit of happiness’ is really equivalent. To him it is not as one
mode among others in which that self-determination appears, but
simply in itself, that the consideration of what is for our real
happiness is the ‘foundation of our liberty,’ and the consideration
itself is no more than a comparison between imagined pleasures
and pains. Hence to a reader who refuses to read into Locke an
interpretation which he does not himself supply, the range of moral
liberty must seem as narrow as its nature is ambiguous. As to its
range, the greater part of our actions, and among them those which
we are apt to think our best, are not and could not be preceded by
any consideration whether they are for our real happiness or no. In
truth, they result from a character which the conception of self has
rendered possible, or express an interest in objects of which this
conception is the condition, and for that reason they represent a
will self-determined and free; but they do not rest on the foundation
which Locke calls ‘the necessary foundation of our liberty.’ As
to the nature of this liberty, the reader, who takes Locke at his
word, would find himself left to choose between the view of it as
the condition of a mind ‘suspended’ between rival presentations of
the pleasant, and the equally untenable view of it as that ‘liberty
of indifference,’ which Locke himself is quite ready to deride--as
consisting in a choice prior to desire, which determines what the
desire shall be. [2]
[1] Cap. 21, sec. 51.
[2] Cf. the passage in sec. 56: ‘When he has once chosen it, and
thereby it is become part of his happiness, it raises desire,’ &c.
(Cf. also sec. 43 sub fin.)
If an action is moved by desire for an object, Locke asks no
questions about origin of the object: But what is to be said of
actions, which we only do because we ought?
16. This ambiguous deliverance about moral freedom, it must be
observed, is the necessary result on a mind, having too strong a
practical hold on life to tamper with human responsibility, of
a doctrine which denies the originativeness of thought, and in
consequence cannot consistently allow any motive to desire, but the
image of a past pleasure or pain. The full logical effect of the
doctrine, however, does not appear in Locke, because, with his way
of taking any desire of which the satisfaction produces pleasure to
have pleasure for its object, he never comes in sight of the question
how the manifold objects of actual human interest are possible for
a being who only feels and retains, or combines, his feelings. An
action moved by love of country, love of fame, love of a friend, love
of the beautiful, would cause him no more difficulty than one moved
by desire for the renewal of some sensual enjoyment, or for that
maintenance of health which is the condition of such enjoyment in the
future. If pressed about them, we may suppose that--availing himself
of the language probably current in the philosophic society in which
he lived, though it first became generally current in England through
the writings of his quasi-pupil, Shaftesbury--he would have said
that he found in his breast affections for public good, as well as
for self-good, the satisfaction of which gave pleasure, and to which
his doctrine, that pleasure is the ‘object of desire in general,’
was accordingly applicable. The question--of what feelings or
combinations of feelings are the objects which excite these several
desires copies?--it does not occur to him to ask. It is only when a
class of actions presents itself for which a motive in the way of
desire or aversion is not readily assignable that any difficulty
arises, and then it is a difficulty which the assignment of such a
motive, without any question asked as to its possibility for a merely
feeling and imagining subject, is thought sufficiently to dispose
of. Such a class of actions is that of which we say that we ‘ought’
to do them, even when we are not compelled and had rather not. We
ought, it is generally admitted, to keep our promises, even when it
is inconvenient to us to do so and no punishment could overtake us if
we did not. We ought to be just even in ways that the law does not
prescribe, and when we are beyond its ken; and that, too, in dealing
with men towards whom we have no inclination to be generous. We ought
even--so at least Locke ‘on the authority of Revelation’ would have
said--to forgive injuries which we cannot forget, and if not ‘to love
our enemies’ in the literal sense, which may be an impossibility, yet
to act as if we did. To what motive are such actions to be assigned?
Their object is pleasure, but pleasure given not by nature but by law.
17. ‘To desire for pleasure or aversion from pain,’ Locke would
answer, ‘but a pleasure and pain other than the natural consequences
of acts and attached to them by some law.’ This is the result of
his enquiry into ‘Moral Relations’ (Book II., chap. 28). Good and
evil, he tells us, being ‘nothing but pleasure and pain, moral good
or evil is only the conformity or disagreement of our actions to
some law, whereby good or evil, _i.e._, pleasure or pain, is drawn
on us by the will and power of the law-maker.’ All law according
to its ‘true nature’ is a rule set to the actions of others by an
intelligent being, having ‘power to reward the compliance with,
and punish deviation from, his rule by some good and evil that is
not the natural product and consequence of the action itself; for
that, being a natural convenience or inconvenience, would operate
of itself without a law.’ Of such law there are three sorts. 1.
Divine Law, ‘promulgated to men by the light of nature or voice of
revelation, by comparing their actions to which they judge whether,
as duties or sins, they are like to procure them happiness or misery
from the hands of the Almighty.’ 2. Civil Law, ‘the rule set by the
Commonwealth to the actions of those who belong to it,’ reference
to which decides ‘whether they be criminal or no.’ 3. ‘The law of
opinion or reputation,’ according to agreement or disagreement with
which actions are reckoned ‘virtues or vices.’ This law may or may
not coincide with the divine law. So far as it does, virtues and
vices are really, what they are always supposed to be, actions ‘in
their own nature ‘severally right or wrong. It is not as really right
or wrong, however, but only as esteemed so, that an act is virtuous
or vicious, and thus ‘the common measure of virtue and vice is the
approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a tacit consent
establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men
in the world, whereby several actions come to find credit or disgrace
among them, according to the judgment, maxims, or fashions of the
place.’ Each sort of law has its own ‘enforcement in the way of good
and evil.’ That of the civil law is obvious. That of the Divine Law
lies in the pleasures and pains of ‘another world,’ which (we have to
suppose) render actions ‘in their own nature good and evil.’ That of
the third sort of law lies in those consequences of social reputation
and dislike which are stronger motives to most men than are the
rewards and punishments either of God or the magistrate (chap. 28, §§
5-12).
Conformity to law not the moral good, but a means to it.
18. ‘Moral goodness or evil,’ Locke concludes, ‘is the conformity or
non-conformity of any action’ to one or other of the above rules (§
14). But such conformity or non-conformity is not a feeling, pleasant
or painful, at all. If, then, the account of the good as consisting
in pleasure, of which the morally good is a particular form, is to
be adhered to, we must suppose that, when moral goodness is said
to be conformity to law, it is so called merely with reference
to the specific means of attaining that pleasure in which moral
good consists. Not the conception of conformity to law, but the
imagination of a certain pleasure, will determine the desire that
moves the moral act, as every other desire. The distinction between
the moral act and an act judiciously done for the sake, let us say,
of some pleasure of the palate, will lie only in the channel through
which comes the pleasure that each is calculated to obtain. If the
motive of an act done for the sake of the pleasure of eating differs
from the motive of an act done for the sake of sexual pleasure on
account of the difference of the channels through which the pleasures
are severally obtained, in that sense only can the motive of either
of these acts, upon Locke’s principles, be taken to differ from the
motive of an act morally done. The explanation, then, of the acts
not readily assignable to desire or aversion, of which we say that
we only do them because we ‘ought,’ has been found. They are so far
of a kind with all actions done to obtain or avoid what Locke calls
‘future’ pleasures or pains that the difficulty of assigning a motive
for them only arises from the fact that their immediate result is not
an end but a means. They differ from these, however, inasmuch as the
pleasure they draw after them is not their ‘natural consequence,’ any
more than the pain attaching to a contrary act would be, but is only
possible through the action of God, the magistrate, or society in
some of its forms.
Hume has to derive from ‘impressions’ the objects which Locke took
for granted.
19. After the above examination we can easily anticipate the points
on which a candid and clear-headed man, who accepted the principles
of Locke’s doctrine, would see that it needed explanation and
development. If all action is determined by impulse to remove the
most pressing uneasiness, as consisting in desire for the greatest
pleasure of which the agent is at the time capable; if this, again,
means desire for the renewal of some ‘impression’ previously
experienced, and all impressions are either those of sense or derived
from them, how are we to account for those actual objects of human
interest and pursuit which seem far removed from any combination
of animal pleasures or of the means thereto, and specially for
that class of actions determined, as Locke says, by expectation of
pain or pleasure other than the ‘natural consequence’ of the act,
to which the term ‘moral’ is properly applied? Hume, as we have
seen, [1] in accepting Locke’s principles, clothes them in a more
precise terminology, marking the distinction between the feeling as
originally felt and the same as returning in memory or imagination as
that between ‘impression and idea,’ and excluding _original_ ideas
of reflection. ‘An impression first strikes upon the senses, and
makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain,
of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by
the mind, which remains after the impression ceases; and this we call
an idea. This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns upon the
soul, produces the new impressions of desire and aversion, hope and
fear, which may properly be called impressions of reflection, because
derived from it’ _(a)_. ‘These, again, are copied by the memory and
imagination, and become ideas; which perhaps in their turn give rise
to other impressions’ _(b)_. Thus the impressions of reflection,
marked _(a)_, will be determined by ideas copied from impressions
of sense. If desires, they will be desires for the renewal either
of a pleasure incidental to the satisfaction of appetite, or of
a pleasant sight or sound, a sweet taste or smell. These desires
and their satisfactions will again be copied in ideas, but how can
the impressions _(b)_ to which these ideas give rise be other than
desires for the renewal of the original animal pleasures? How do they
come to be desires as unlike these as are the motives which actuate
not merely the saint or the philanthropist, but the ordinary good
neighbour or honest citizen or head of a family?
[1] General Introd., Vol. I, par. 195
Questions which he found at issue, a. Is virtue interested? b. What
is conscience?
20. During the interval between the publication of Locke’s essay
and the ‘Treatise on Human Nature’ there had been much writing on
ethical questions in English. The effect of this on Hume is plain
enough. He writes with reference to current controversy, and in
the moral part of the treatise probably had the views of Clarke,
Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson more consciously before him than
Locke’s. This does not interfere, however, with the propriety of
affiliating him in respect of his views on morals, no less than on
knowledge, directly to Locke, whose principles and method were in the
main accepted by all the moralists of that age. His characteristic
lies in his more consistent application of these, and the effect of
current controversy upon him was chiefly to show him the line which
this application must take. It was a controversy which turned almost
wholly on two points; _(a)_ the distinction between ‘interested and
disinterested,’ selfish and unselfish affections; _(b)_ the origin
and nature of that ‘law,’ relation to which, according to Locke,
constitutes our action ‘virtuous or vicious.’ In the absence of any
notion of thought but as a faculty which puts together simple ideas
into complex ones, of reason but as a faculty which calculates means
and perceives the agreement of ideas mediately, it could have but one
end.
Hobbes’ answer to first question,
21. By the generation in which Hume was bred the issue as to the
possible disinterestedness of action was supposed to lie between
the view of Hobbes and that of Shaftesbury. Hobbes’ moral doctrine
had not been essentially different from Locke’s, but he had been
offensively explicit on questions which Locke left open to more
genial views than his doctrine logically justified. Each started from
the position that the ultimate motive to every action can only be
the imagination of one’s own pleasure or pain, and neither properly
left room for the determination of desire by a conceived object as
distinct from remembered pleasure. But while Locke, as we have seen,
illogically took for granted desires so determined, and thus made it
possible for a disciple to admit any benevolent desires as motives
on the strength of the pleasure which they produce when satisfied,
Hobbes had been more severe in his method, and had explained every
desire, of which the direct motive could not be taken to be the
renewal of some animal pleasure, as desire either for the power
in oneself to command such pleasure at will or for the pleasure
incidental to the contemplation of the signs of such power. Hence his
peculiar treatment of compassion and the other ‘social affections,’
which it is easier to show to be untrue to the facts of the case
than to be other than the proper consequence of principles which
Locke had rendered orthodox. [1] The counter-doctrine of Shaftesbury
holds water just so far as it involves the rejection of the doctrine
that pleasure is the sole ultimate motive. It becomes confused just
because its author had no definite theory of reason, as constitutive
of objects, that could justify this rejection.
[1] See ‘Leviathan,’ part 1, chap. 6.
Counter-doctrine of Shaftesbury. Vice is selfishness: But no clear
account of selfishness.
22. He begins with a doctrine that directly contradicts Locke’s
identification of the good with pleasure, and of the morally good
with pleasure occurring in a particular way, ‘In a sensible creature
that which is not done through any affection at all makes neither
good nor ill in the nature of that creature; who then only is
supposed good, when the good or ill of the system to which he has
relation is the immediate object of some passion or affection moving
him.’ [1] This, it will be seen, as against Locke, implies that the
good of a man’s action lies not in any pleasure sequent upon it to
him, but in the nature of the affection from which it proceeds; and
that the goodness of this affection depends on its being determined
by an object wholly different from imagined pleasure--the _conceived_
good of a system to which the man has relation, _i.e._, of human
society, which in Shaftesbury’s language is the ‘public’ as distinct
from the ‘private’ system. It is not enough that an action should
result in good to this system; it must proceed from affection for it.
‘Whatever is done which happens to be advantageous to the species
through an affection merely towards self-good does not imply any
more goodness in the creature than as the affection itself is good.
Let him in any particular act ever so well; if at the bottom it
be that selfish affection alone which moves him, he is in himself
still vicious.’ [2] Here, then, we seem to have a clear theory of
moral evil as consisting in selfish, of moral good as consisting
in unselfish affections. But what exactly constitutes a selfish
affection, according to Shaftesbury? The answer that first suggests
itself, is that as the unselfish affection is an affection for
public good, so a selfish one is an affection for ‘self-good,’ the
good of the ‘private system.’ Shaftesbury, however, does not give
this answer. ‘Affection for private good’ with him is not, as such,
selfish; it is so only when ‘excessive’ and ‘inconsistent with the
interest of the species or public.’ [3] This qualification seems
at once to efface the clear line of distinction previously drawn.
It puts ‘self-affection’ on a level with public affection which,
according to Shaftesbury, may equally err on the side of excess. It
implies that an affection for self-good, if only it be advantageous
to the species, may be good; which is just what had been previously
denied. And not only so; although, when the self-affections are under
view, they are only allowed a qualified goodness in virtue of their
indirect contribution to the good of the species, yet conversely, the
superiority of the affections, which have this latter good for their
object, is urged specially on the ground of the greater amount of
happiness or ‘self-good’ which they produce.
[1] ‘Inquiry concerning Virtue,’ Book I. part 2, sec. 1.
[2] Ibid., Book I., part 2, sec. 2.
[3] Ibid., Book II., part 1, sec. 3.
Confusion in his notions of self-good and public good: Is all living
for pleasure, or only too much of it, selfish?