Progressive Morality: An Essay in Ethics

med, and how it may be further educated and improved, it is desirable to discriminate carefully between the intellectual and the

ral determinations and conclusions. The final sentence; it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praiseworthy or blameable; that which stamps on them the mark of honour or infamy, approbation or censure; that which renders morality an active principle, and constitutes virtue our happiness and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species. For what else can have an influence of this nature? But, in order to pave the way for such a sentiment and give a proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant comparisons

ncerning the Principles

e way, as soon as we have recognised that an act is brave or generous, we regard with esteem or admiration the doer of it. But, though the feeling of approbation or disapprobation follows instantaneously on the act of judgment, the recognition of the character of the action, or its reference to a class, which constitutes this act of judgment, may be, and often is, a process of considerable length and complexity. Take the case of a lie. What did the man really say? In what sense did he employ the words used? What was the extent of his knowledge at the time that he made the statement? And what was his intention? These and possibly other questions have to be answered, before we are justified in accusing him of having told a lie. When the offence is not only a moral but a le

tributes of authoritativeness, absoluteness, and even infallibility, which are not unnaturally ascribed to an act in which, there being no process of reasoning, there seems to be no room for error. And, indeed, the feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation can never be properly described as erroneous, though they are frequently misapplied. The error attaches to the preliminary process of reasoning, reference, or classification, and, if this be wrongly conducted, there is no justification for the feeling which is consequent upon it. But, instead of our asking for the justification of the feeling in the rational process which has preceded it, we often unconsciously justify our reasoning by the feeling, and thus the whole process assumes the unreflective character which properly belongs only to the emotional part of it. It is the want of a clear distinction between the logical p

rd for our own dignity and character, and for our own opinion of ourselves. When any of these various appetites or desires are gratified, we feel satisfaction, and, on the other hand, when they are thwarted, we feel dissatisfaction. Similarly, we have a number of affections, of which others are the object, some of them of a malevolent or resentful, but most of them of a benevolent character, including a general desire to confer all the happiness that we can. Here, again, we feel satisfaction, when our affections are gratified, and dissatisfaction, when they are thwarted. Now these feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, which are called reflex feelings, because they are reflected, as it were, from the objects of our desires, include, though they are by no means coextensive with, the feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation. When, for instance, we gratify the appetites of hunger or thirst, or our love of curiosity or power, we feel satisfaction, but we can hardly be said to re

wn poverty asks to have the time of payment deferred, we neither visit the one with praise nor the other with censure, though, if their conduct were reversed, we should censure the former and praise the latter. The reason of this difference of treatment is plain. There is not, or at least need not be, any conflict, in the case of the well-to-do man, between his own convenience or any reasonable gratification of his desires and the satisfaction of a just claim. Hence, in paying the

n makes way for another in the street, or refrains from eating or drinking more than is good for him, neither he nor the bystander probably ever thinks of regarding the act as a meritorious one. It is taken as a matter of course, though the opposite conduct might, under certain circumstances, be of suffic

sionally, between the pleasure or advantage of others and a disproportionate injury to himself; and he who, in the struggle, gives the preference to the former of these motives usually becomes the object of censure or, on reflexion, of self-disapprobation, while he who gives the preference to the latter becomes the object of praise or, on reflexion, of self-approbation. I shall endeavour to illustrate this position by a few instances mostly taken from common life. We praise a man who, by due economy, makes decent provision for himself in old age, as we blame a man who fails to do so. Quite apart from any public or social considerations, we admire and applaud in the one man the power of self-restraint and the habit of foresight, which enable him to subordinate his immediate gratifications to his larger interests in the remote future, and to forego sensual and passing pleasures for the purpose of preserving his self-respect and personal independence in later life. And we admire and applaud him still more, if to these purely self-regarding considerations he adds the social one of wishing to avoid becomi

d, and to interfere seriously with his other employments. In this case no reasonable person, I presume, would censure the trustee for endeavouring, even at some inconvenience or expense to the persons for whose benefit the trust existed, to release himself from his obligation or to devolve part of the work on a professional adviser. While, however, the work connected with the trust did not interfere with other obligations or with the promotion of the welfare of others, no one, I imagine, would censure the trustee for continuing to perform it, to his own inconvenience or disadvantage, if he chose to do so. His neighbours might, perhaps, say that he was foolish, but they would hardly go to the length of saying that he acted wrongly. Neither, on the other ha

al sentiment and even the dictates of personal morality, Esprit de corps is, doubtless, a noble sentiment, and, on the whole, productive of much good, but, when it comes into collision with the more general rules of morality, its effects are simply pernicious. I will next take an example of the conflict between two impulses, each having for its object the good of others, from the very familiar case of a man having to appoint to, or vote in the election to, a vacant office or situation. The interests of the public service or of some institution require that the most competent candidate should be preferred. But a relative, or a friend, or a political ally is standing. Affection, therefore, or friendship, or loyalty to party ties often dictates one course of conduct, and regard for the public interests another. When the case is thus plainly stated, there are probably few men who would seriously maintain that we ought to subordinate the wider to the narrower considerations, and still, in practice, there are few men who have the courage to act constantly on what is surely the right principle in this matter, and, what is worse still, even if they did, they would not always be sustained by public opinion, while they would be almost certain to be condemned by the circle in which they move. So frequently do the difficulties of this position recur, that I have often heard a shrewd friend observe that no man who was fit for the exercise of patronage would ever desire to be entrusted with it. The moral rule in ordinary cases is plain enough; it is to appoint or vote for the candidate who is most competent to fulfil the duties of the post to be filled up. There are exceptional cases in which it may be allowable slightly to modify this rule, as where it is desirable to encourage particular services, or particular nationalities, or the like, but, even in these cases, the rule of superior competency ought to be the preponderating consideration. P

ple yield to social temptations, as where they drink too much, or bet, or play cards, when they know that they will most likely lose their money, out of a feeling of mere good fellowship; or where, from the mere desire to amuse others, they give parties which are beyond their means. The gravest example is to be found in certain cases of seduction. Instances of men making large and imprudent sacrifices of money for inadequate objects are very rare, and are rather designated as foolish than wrong. With regard to all the failings and offences which fall under this head, it may be remarked that, from their false show of generosity, society is apt to treat them too venially, except where they entail degradation or disgrace. If it be asked how actions of t

any consciousness of their import. I do not at all deny that a habit may become so perfect that the acts proceeding from it cease to involve any struggle between conflicting motives, but, in this case, I conceive that our approbation or disapprobation is transferred from the individual acts to the habit from which they spring, and that what we really applaud or condemn is the character

raseology which the employment of the other phrases would sometimes have occasioned. In a civilized and educated community, the social sentiment may, on almost all points except those which involve obscure or delicate considerations of morality, be taken to be identical with the moral sentiment of the most reflective members of the society, and hence in the tolerably o

almost equal risk in order to save another, or, in order to promote another's interests, to forego interests almost as great, is not our conduct more properly designated as weak or quixotic, than noble or generous? This would not, I think, be the answer of mankind at large to the question, or that of any person whose moral sentiments had been developed under healthy influences. When a man, at the risk of his own life, saves another from drowning, or, at a similar risk, protects his comrade in battle, or, rushing into the midst of a fire, attempts to rescue the helpless victims, surely the feeling of the bystanders is that of admiration, and not of pity or contempt. When a man, with his life in his hands, goes forth on a missionary or a philanthropic enterprise, like Xavier, or Henry Martyn, or Howard, or Livingstone, or Patteson, or when a man, like Frederick Vyner, insists on transferring his own chance of escape from a murderous gang of brigands to his married friend, humanity at large rightly regards itself as his debtor, and ordinary men feel that their very nature has been ennobled and exalted by his example. But it is not only these acts o

of morality, that there is a large number of acts which we neither praise nor blame, and this is emphatically the case where the competition is between a man's own interests and those of his neighbours. We applaud generosity; we censure meanness: but there is a large intermediate class of acts which can neither be designated as generous nor mean. It will be observed that, in my enumeration of the classes of acts to which praise and blame, self-approbation and self-disapprobation attach, I have carefully drawn a distinction between the invariable connexion which obtains between certain acts and the ethical approval of ourselves or others, and the only general connexion w

pse again into poverty, which would be all the more keenly felt for their temporary enjoyment of prosperity. Moreover, I should be injuring the community at large, by withdrawing a number of persons from industrial employments and transferring them to the non-productive classes. Again, if the five thousand a year were withdrawn not from my personal expenditure, but from industrial enterprises in which I was engaged, I should be actually depriving the families of many workmen and artisans of the fruits of their honest labour for the purpose of enabling a smaller number of families to live in sloth and indolence. But, now, suppose the case I have imagined to become a general one, and that it was a common occurrence for rich men to dispense their superfluous wealth amongst their poorer neighbours, without demanding any return in labour or services. The result would inevitably be the creation of a large class of idle persons, who would probably soon become a torment to themselves, while their descendants, often brought up to no employment and with an insufficient income to support them, would probably lapse into pauperism. The effect on the community at large, if the evil became widely spread, would be the paralysis of trade and commerce. Of course, I am aware that these evils would be, to a certain extent, modified in practice by the good sense of the recipients, some of whom might employ their money on reproductive industries instead of on merely furnishing themselves with the means of living at their ease; but that the general tendency would be that which I have inti

unenlightened benevolence, and the importance of ascertaining that the 'greater good of others,' to which we sacrifice our own interests or enjoyments, is a real, and not merely an appa

tention and stimulate our reflexion, one or other of these feelings has been gratified or thwarted: moreover, that we praise, in the case of others, and approve, in our own case, all those actions of the above kind, in which a man subordinates his own lower to his higher good, or his own good to the greater good of others, or, when the interests only of others are at stake, the lesser good of some to the greater good of others, as well as, under certain circumstances, those actions in which he refuses to subordinate his own greater good to the lesser good of others; while we blame, i

amongst primitive and uneducated men than it is in civilized life. Amongst ourselves, not only are the feelings of approbation and disapprobation themselves largely modified by the account we take of mixed motives, qualifying circumstances, and the like, but the expression of, them is still further restrained by the caution which the civilized man habitually practises in the presence of others. Indeed, great, in many respects, as are the advantages of this moderation and restraint, there is a certain danger that, as civilisation advances, the approval of virtue and the disapproval of vice may cease to be expressed in sufficiently plain and emphatic terms. But, on the other hand, with

he improved moral judgments, is at once an indispensable branch of moral education and an indispensable condition of moral progress. But this is the function, not so much of t