) The opposite view in England is continually expressed in the saying, “You should never pull down an opinion until you have something to put in its place,” which can only mean, if you are convinced that some religious or other hypothesis is false, you are morally bound to repress or conceal your conviction until you have discovered positive affirmations or explanations as unqualified and consolatory as those you have destroyed. 82. See this powerfully stated by Shaftesbury. (Inquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part iii.) The same objection applies to Dr. Mansel's modification of the theological doctrine—viz. that the origin of morals is not the will but the nature of God. 83. “The one great and binding ground of the belief of God and a hereafter is the law of conscience.”—Coleridge, Notes Theological and Political, p. 367. That our moral faculty is our one reason for maintaining the supreme benevolence of the Deity was a favourite position of Kant. 84. “Nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quoddam augurium futurorum; idque in maximis ingeniis altissimisque animis et exsistit maxime et apparet facillime.”—Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 14. 85. “It is a calumny to say that men are roused to heroic actions by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense—sugar-plums of any kind in this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier hired to be shot has his ‘honour of a soldier,’ different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.”—Carlyle's Hero-worship, p. 237 (ed. 1858). 86. “Clamat Epicurus, is quem vos nimis voluptatibus esse deditum dicitis, non posse jucunde vivi nisi sapienter, honeste, justeque vivatur, nec sapienter, honeste, juste nisi jucunde.”—Cicero, De Fin. i. 18. 87. “The virtues to be complete must have fixed their residence in the heart and become appetites impelling to actions without further thought than the gratification of them; so that after their expedience ceases they still continue to operate by the desire they raise.... I knew a mercer who having gotten a competency of fortune, thought to retire and enjoy himself in quiet; but finding he could not be easy without business was forced to return to the shop and assist his former partners gratis, in the nature of a journeyman. Why then should it be thought strange that a man long inured to the practice of moral duties should persevere in them out of liking, when they can yield him no further advantage?”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. i. p. 269. Mr. J. S. Mill in his Utilitarianism dwells much on the heroism which he thinks this view of morals may produce. 88. See Lactantius, Inst. Div. vi. 9. Montesquieu, in his Décadence de l'Empire romain, has shown in detail the manner in which the crimes of Roman politicians contributed to the greatness of their nation. Modern history furnishes only too many illustrations of the same truth. 89. “That quick sensibility which is the groundwork of all advances towards perfection increases the pungency of pains and vexations.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, ii. 16, § 4. 90. This position is forcibly illustrated by Mr. Maurice in his fourth lecture On Conscience (1868). It is manifest that a tradesman resisting a dishonest or illegal trade custom, an Irish peasant in a disturbed district revolting against the agrarian conspiracy of his class, or a soldier in many countries conscientiously refusing in obedience to the law to fight a duel, would incur the full force of social penalties, because he failed to do that which was illegal or criminal. 91. See Brown On the Characteristics, pp. 206-209. 92. “A toothache produces more violent convulsions of pain than a phthisis or a dropsy. A gloomy disposition ... may be found in very worthy characters, though it is sufficient alone to embitter life.... A selfish villain may possess a spring and alacrity of temper, which is indeed a good quality, but which is rewarded much beyond its merit, and when attended with good fortune will compensate for the uneasiness and remorse arising from all the other vices.”—Hume's Essays: The Sceptic. 93. At the same time, the following passage contains, I think, a great deal of wisdom and of a kind peculiarly needed in England at the present day:—“The nature of the subject furnishes the strongest presumption that no better system will ever, for the future, be invented, in order to account for the origin of the benevolent from the selfish affections, and reduce all the various emotions of the human mind to a perfect simplicity. The case is not the same in this species of philosophy as in physics. Many an hypothesis in nature, contrary to first appearances, has been found, on more accurate scrutiny, solid and satisfactory.... But the presumption always lies on the other side in all enquiries concerning the origin of our passions, and of the internal operations of the human mind. The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomenon, is probably the true one.... The affections are not susceptible of any impression from the refinements of reason or imagination; and it is always found that a vigorous exertion of the latter faculties, necessarily, from the narrow capacity of the human mind, destroys all activity in the former.”—Hume's Enquiry Concerning Morals, Append. II. 94. “The pleasing consciousness and self-approbation that rise up in the mind of a virtuous man, exclusively of any direct, explicit, consideration of advantage likely to accrue to himself from his possession of those good qualities” (Hartley On Man, vol. i. p. 493), form a theme upon which moralists of both schools are fond of dilating, in a strain that reminds one irresistibly of the self-complacency of a famous nursery hero, while reflecting upon his own merits over a Christmas-pie. Thus Adam Smith says, “The man who, not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has performed a generous action, when he looks forward to those whom he has served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude, and by sympathy with them, of the esteem and approbation of all mankind. And when he looks backward to the motive from which he acted, and surveys it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, he still continues to enter into it, and applauds himself by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial judge. In both these points of view, his conduct appears to him every way agreeable.... Misery and wretchedness can never enter the breast in which dwells complete self-satisfaction.”—Theory of Moral Sentiments, part ii. ch. ii. § 2; part iii. ch. iii. I suspect that many moralists confuse the self-gratulation which they suppose a virtuous man to feel, with the delight a religious man experiences from the sense of the protection and favour of the Deity. But these two feelings are clearly distinct, and it will, I believe, be found that the latter is most strongly experienced by the very men who most sincerely disclaim all sense of merit. “Were the perfect man to exist,” said that good and great writer, Archer Butler, “he himself would be the last to know it; for the highest stage of advancement is the lowest descent in humility.” At all events, the reader will observe, that on utilitarian principles nothing could be more pernicious or criminal than that modest, humble, and diffident spirit, which diminishes the pleasure of self-gratulation, one of the highest utilitarian motives to virtue. 95. Hartley has tried in one place to evade this conclusion by an appeal to the doctrine of final causes. He says that the fact that conscience is not an original principle of our nature, but is formed mechanically in the manner I have described, does not invalidate the fact that it is intended for our guide, “for all the things which have evident final causes, are plainly brought about by mechanical means;” and he appeals to the milk in the breast, which is intended for the sustenance of the young, but which is nevertheless mechanically produced. (On Man, vol. ii. pp. 338-339.) But it is plain that this mode of reasoning would justify us in attributing an authoritative character to any habit—e.g. to that of avarice—which these writers assure us is in the manner of its formation an exact parallel to conscience. The later followers of Hartley certainly cannot be accused of any excessive predilection for the doctrine of final causes, yet we sometimes find them asking what great difference it can make whether (when conscience is admitted by both parties to be real) it is regarded as an original principle of our nature, or as a product of association? Simply this. If by the constitution of our nature we are subject to a law of duty which is different from and higher than our interest, a man who violates this law through interested motives, is deserving of reprobation. If on the other hand there is no natural law of duty, and if the pursuit of our interest is the one original principle of our being, no one can be censured who pursues it, and the first criterion of a wise man will be his determination to eradicate every habit (conscientious or otherwise) which impedes him in doing so. 96. On Human Nature, chap. ix. § 10. 97. Enquiry concerning Good and Evil. 98. This theory is noticed by Hutcheson, and a writer in the Spectator (No. 436) suggests that it may explain the attraction of prize-fights. The case of the pleasure derived from fictitious sorrow is a distinct question, and has been admirably treated in Lord Kames' Essays on Morality. Bishop Butler notices (Second Sermon on Compassion), that it is possible for the very intensity of a feeling of compassion to divert men from charity by making them “industriously turn away from the miserable;” and it is well known that Goethe, on account of this very susceptibility, made it one of the rules of his life to avoid everything that could suggest painful ideas. Hobbes makes the following very characteristic comments on some famous lines of Lucretius: “From what passion proceedeth it that men take pleasure to behold from the shore the danger of those that are at sea in a tempest or in fight, or from a safe castle to behold two armies charge one another in the field? It is certainly in the whole sum joy, else men would never flock to such a spectacle. Nevertheless, there is both joy and grief, for as there is novelty and remembrance of our own security present, which is delight, so there is also pity, which is grief. But the delight is so far predominant that men usually are content in such a case to be spectators of the misery of their friends.” (On Human Nature, ch. ix. § 19.) Good Christians, according to some theologians, are expected to enjoy this pleasure in great perfection in heaven. “We may believe in the next world also the goodness as well as the happiness of the blest will be confirmed and advanced by reflections naturally arising from the view of the misery which some shall undergo, which seems to be a good reason for the creation of those beings who shall be finally miserable, and for the continuation of them in their miserable existence ... though in one respect the view of the misery which the damned undergo might seem to detract from the happiness of the blessed through pity and commiseration, yet under another, a nearer and much more affecting consideration, viz. that all this is the misery they themselves were often exposed to and in danger of incurring, why may not the sense of their own escape so far overcome the sense of another's ruin as quite to extinguish the pain that usually attends the idea of it, and even render it productive of some real happiness? To this purpose, Lucretius' Suave mari,” etc. (Law's notes to his Translation of King's Origin of Evil, pp. 477, 479.) 99. See e.g. Reid's Essays on the Active Powers, essay iii. ch. v. 100. The error I have traced in this paragraph will be found running through a great part of what Mr. Buckle has written upon morals—I think the weakest portion of his great work. See, for example, an elaborate confusion on the subject, History of Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 429. Mr. Buckle maintains that all the philosophers of what is commonly called “the Scotch school” (a school founded by the Irishman Hutcheson, and to which Hume does not belong), were incapable of inductive reasoning, because they maintained the existence of a moral sense or faculty, or of first principles, incapable of resolution; and he enters into a learned enquiry into the causes which made it impossible for Scotch writers to pursue or appreciate the inductive method. It is curious to contrast this view with the language of one, who, whatever may be the value of his original speculations, is, I conceive, among the very ablest philosophical critics of the present century. “Les philosophes écossais adoptèrent les procédés que Bacon avait recommandé d'appliquer à l'étude du monde physique, et les transportèrent dans l'étude du monde moral. Ils firent voir que l'induction baconienne, c'est-à-dire, l'induction précédée d'une observation scrupuleuse des phénomènes, est en philosophie comme en physique la seule méthode légitime. C'est un de leurs titres les plus honorables d'avoir insisté sur cette démonstration, et d'avoir en même temps joint l'exemple au précepte.... Il est vrai que le zèle des philosophes écossais en faveur de la méthode d'observation leur a presque fait dépasser le but. Ils ont incliné à renfermer la psychologie dans la description minutieuse et continuelle de phénomènes de l'âme sans réfléchir assez que cette description doit faire place à l'induction et au raisonnement déductif, et qu'une philosophie qui se bornerait à l'observation serait aussi stérile que celle qui s'amuserait à construire des hypothèses sans avoir préalablement observé.”—Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. Morale au xviiime Siècle, Tome 4, p. 14-16. Dugald Stewart had said much the same thing, but he was a Scotchman, and therefore, according to Mr. Buckle (Hist. of Civ. ii. pp. 485-86), incapable of understanding what induction was. I may add that one of the principal objections M. Cousin makes against Locke is, that he investigated the origin of our ideas before analysing minutely their nature, and the propriety of this method is one of the points on which Mr. Mill (Examination of Sir W. Hamilton) is at issue with M. Cousin. 101. M. Ch. Comte, in his very learned Traité de Législation, liv. iii. ch. iv., has made an extremely curious collection of instances in which different nations have made their own distinctive peculiarities of colour and form the ideal of beauty. 102. “How particularly fine the hard theta is in our English terminations, as in that grand word death, for which the Germans gutturise a sound that puts you in mind of nothing but a loathsome toad.”—Coleridge's Table Talk, p. 181. 103. Mackintosh, Dissert. p. 238. 104. Lord Kames' Essays on Morality (1st edition), pp. 55-56. 105. See Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature, and the preface. 106. Speaking of the animated statue which he regarded as a representative of man, Condillac says, “Le goût peut ordinairement contribuer plus que l'odorat à son bonheur et à son malheur.... Il y contribue même encore plus que les sons harmonieux, parce que le besoin de nourriture lui rend les saveurs plus nécessaires, et par conséquent les lui fait goûter avec plus de vivacité. La faim pourra la rendre malheureuse, mais dès qu'elle aura remarqué les sensations propres à l'apaiser, elle y déterminera davantage son attention, les désirera avec plus de violence et en jouira avec plus de délire.”—Traité des Sensations, 1re partie ch. x. 107. This is one of the favourite thoughts of Pascal, who, however, in his usual fashion dwells upon it in a somewhat morbid and exaggerated strain. “C'est une bien grande misère que de pouvoir prendre plaisir à des choses si basses et si méprisables ... l'homme est encore plus à plaindre de ce qu'il peut se divertir à ces choses si frivoles et si basses, que de ce qu'il s'afflige de ses misères effectives.... D'ou vient que cet homme, qui a perdu depuis peu son fils unique, et qui, accablé de procès et de querelles, était ce matin si troublé, n'y pense plus maintenant? Ne vous en étonnez pas; il est tout occupé à voir par où passera un cerf que ses chiens poursuivent.... C'est une joie de malade et de frénétique.”—Pensées (Misère de l'homme). 108. “Quæ singula improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista certum sit, nihil esse certi, nec miserius quidquam homine, aut superbius. Cæteris quippe animantium sola victus cura est, in quo sponte naturæ benignitas sufficit: uno quidem vel præferenda cunctis bonis, quod de gloria, de pecunia, ambitione, superque de morte, non cogitant.”—Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 5. 109. Paley, in his very ingenious, and in some respects admirable, chapter on happiness tries to prove the inferiority of animal pleasures, by showing the short time their enjoyment actually lasts, the extent to which they are dulled by repetition, and the cases in which they incapacitate men for other pleasures. But this calculation omits the influence of some animal enjoyments upon health and temperament.
The fact, however, that health, which is a condition of body, is the chief source of happiness, Paley fully admits. “Health,” he says, “is the one thing needful ... when we are in perfect health and spirits, we feel in ourselves a happiness independent of any particular outward gratification.... This is an enjoyment which the Deity has annexed to life, and probably constitutes in a great measure the happiness of infants and brutes ... of oysters, periwinkles, and the like; for which I have sometimes been at a loss to find out amusement.” On the test of happiness he very fairly says, “All that can be said is that there remains a presumption in favour of those conditions of life in which men generally appear most cheerful and contented; for though the apparent happiness of mankind be not always a true measure of their real happiness, it is the best measure we have.”—Moral Philosophy, i. 6. 110. A writer who devoted a great part of his life to studying the deaths of men in different countries, classes, and churches, and to collecting from other physicians information on the subject, says: “À mesure qu'on s'éloigne des grands foyers de civilisation, qu'on se rapproche des plaines et des montagnes, le caractère de la mort prend de plus en plus l'aspect calme du ciel par un beau crépuscule du soir.... En général la mort s'accomplit d'une manière d'autant plus simple et naturelle qu'on est plus libre des innombrables liens de la civilisation.”—Lauvergne, De l'agonie de la Mort, tome i. pp. 131-132. 111. “I will omit much usual declamation upon the dignity and capacity of our nature, the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution, upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vi. Bentham in like manner said, “Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry,” and he maintained that the value of a pleasure depends on—its (1) intensity, (2) duration, (3) certainty, (4) propinquity, (5) purity, (6) fecundity, (7) extent (Springs of Action). The recognition of the “purity” of a pleasure might seem to imply the distinction for which I have contended in the text, but this is not so. The purity of a pleasure or pain, according to Bentham, is “the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind: that is pain if it be a pleasure, pleasure if it be a pain.”—Morals and Legislation, i. § 8. Mr. Buckle (Hist. of Civilisation, vol. ii. pp. 399-400) writes in a somewhat similar strain, but less unequivocally, for he admits that mental pleasures are “more ennobling” than physical ones. The older utilitarians, as far as I have observed, did not even advert to the question. This being the case, it must have been a matter of surprise as well as of gratification to most intuitive moralists to find Mr. Mill fully recognising the existence of different kinds of pleasure, and admitting that the superiority of the higher kinds does not spring from their being greater in amount.—Utilitarianism, pp. 11-12. If it be meant by this that we have the power of recognising some pleasures as superior to others in kind, irrespective of all consideration of their intensity, their cost, and their consequences, I submit that the admission is completely incompatible with the utilitarian theory, and that Mr. Mill has only succeeded in introducing Stoical elements into his system by loosening its very foundation. The impossibility of establishing an aristocracy of enjoyments in which, apart from all considerations of consequences, some which give less pleasure and are less widely diffused are regarded as intrinsically superior to others which give more pleasure and are more general, without admitting into our estimate a moral element, which on utilitarian principles is wholly illegitimate, has been powerfully shown since the first edition of this book by Professor Grote, in his Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy, chap. iii. 112. Büchner, Force et Matière, pp. 163-164. There is a very curious collection of the speculations of the ancient philosophers on this subject in Plutarch's treatise, De Placitis Philos. 113. Aulus Gellius, Noctes, x. 23. The law is given by Dion. Halicarn. Valerius Maximus says, “Vini usus olim Romanis feminis ignotus fuit, ne scilicet in aliquod dedecus prolaberentur: quia proximus a Libero patre intemperantiæ gradus ad inconcessam Venerem esse consuevit” (Val. Max. ii. 1, § 5). This is also noticed by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xiv. 14), who ascribes the law to Romulus, and who mentions two cases in which women were said to have been put to death for this offence, and a third in which the offender was deprived of her dowry. Cato said that the ancient Romans were accustomed to kiss their wives for the purpose of discovering whether they had been drinking wine. The Bona Dea, it is said, was originally a woman named Fatua, who was famous for her modesty and fidelity to her husband, but who, unfortunately, having once found a cask of wine in the house, got drunk, and was in consequence scourged to death by her husband. He afterwards repented of his act, and paid divine honours to her memory, and as a memorial of her death, a cask of wine was always placed upon the altar during the rites. (Lactantius, Div. Inst. i. 22.) The Milesians, also, and the inhabitants of Marseilles are said to have had laws forbidding women to drink wine (Ælian, Hist. Var. ii. 38). Tertullian describes the prohibition of wine among the Roman women as in his time obsolete, and a taste for it was one of the great trials of St. Monica (Aug. Conf. x. 8). 114. “La loi fondamentale de la morale agit sur toutes les nations bien connues. Il y a mille différences dans les interprétations de cette loi en mille circonstances; mais le fond subsiste toujours le même, et ce fond est l'idée du juste et de l'injuste.”—Voltaire, Le Philosophe ignorant. 115. The feeling in its favour being often intensified by filial affection. “What is the most beautiful thing on the earth?” said Osiris to Horus. “To avenge a parent's wrongs,” was the reply.—Plutarch De Iside et Osiride. 116. Hence the Justinian code and also St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xix. 15) derived servus from “servare,” to preserve, because the victor preserved his prisoners alive. 117. “Les habitants du Congo tuent les malades qu'ils imaginent ne pouvoir en revenir; c'est, disentils, pour leur épargner les douleurs de l'agonie. Dans l'île Formose, lorsqu'un homme est dangereusement malade, on lui passe un nœud coulant au col et on l'étrangle, pour l'arracher à la douleur.”—Helvétius, De l'Esprit, ii. 13. A similar explanation may be often found for customs which are quoted to prove that the nations where they existed had no sense of chastity. “C'est pareillement sous la sauvegarde des lois que les Siamoises, la gorge et les cuisses à moitié découvertes, portées dans les rues sur les palanquins, s'y présentent dans des attitudes très-lascives. Cette loi fut établie par une de leurs reines nommée Tirada, qui, pour dégoûter les hommes d'un amour plus déshonnête, crut devoir employer toute la puissance de la beauté.”—De l'Esprit, ii. 14. 118. “The contest between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest of progressive morality against stationary, of reason and argument against the deification of mere opinion and habit.” (Mill's Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 472); a passage with a true Bentham ring. See, too, vol. i. p. 158. There is, however, a schism on this point in the utilitarian camp. The views which Mr. Buckle has expressed in his most eloquent chapter on the comparative influence of intellectual and moral agencies in civilisation diverge widely from those of Mr. Mill. 119. “Est enim sensualitas quædam vis animæ inferior.... Ratio vero vis animæ est superior.”—Peter Lombard, Sent. ii. 24. 120. Helvétius, De l'Esprit, discours iv. See too, Dr. Draper's extremely remarkable History of Intellectual Development in Europe (New York, 1864), pp. 48, 53. 121. Plutarch, De Cohibenda Ira. 122. Lactantius, Div. Inst. i. 22. The mysteries of the Bona Dea became, however, after a time, the occasion of great disorders. See Juvenal, Sat. vi. M. Magnin has examined the nature of these rites (Origines du Théâtre, pp. 257-259). 123. The history of the vestals, which forms one of the most curious pages in the moral history of Rome, has been fully treated by the Abbé Nadal, in an extremely interesting and well-written memoir, read before the Académie des Belles-lettres, and republished in 1725. It was believed that the prayer of a vestal could arrest a fugitive slave in his flight, provided he had not got past the city walls. Pliny mentions this belief as general in his time. The records of the order contained many miracles wrought at different times to save the vestals or to vindicate their questioned purity, and also one miracle which is very remarkable as furnishing a precise parallel to that of the Jew who was struck dead for touching the ark to prevent its falling. 124. As for example the Sibyls and Cassandra. The same prophetic power was attributed in India to virgins.—Clem. Alexandrin. Strom. iii. 7. 125. This custom continued to the worst period of the empire, though it was shamefully and characteristically evaded. After the fall of Sejanus the senate had no compunction in putting his innocent daughter to death, but their religious feelings were shocked at the idea of a virgin falling beneath the axe. So by way of improving matters “filia constuprata est prius a carnifice, quasi impium esset virginem in carcere perire.”—Dion Cassius, lviii. 11. See too, Tacitus, Annal. v. 9. If a vestal met a prisoner going to execution the prisoner was spared, provided the vestal declared that the encounter was accidental. On the reverence the ancients paid to virgins, see Justus Lipsius, De Vesta et Vestalibus. 126.