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
by _sympathy_; 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. The _general rule_ reaches
beyond those instances from which it arose, while at the same time we
naturally _sympathise_ with 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 which _ought_ to 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 act _ought_ to 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 which _ought_ to 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
action _because 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 it _and_ to others;
[1] and by this test it would be more difficult to show that an
unseasonable passion for reforming mankind was _not_ vicious 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
pain _both_ to 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.