Moral Science; a Compendium of EthicsBain, Alexander
Philosophy
Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics
Bain, Alexander
Ethics; Ethics -- History
He refers to Beauty or Taste as a parallel case, where there may be an
operation of the intellect to compute proportions, but where the
elegance or beauty must arise in the region of feeling. Thus, while
_reason_ conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood, _sentiment_ or
emotion must give beauty and deformity, vice and virtue.
Appendix No. II. is a discussion of SELF-LOVE. The author adverts first
to the position that benevolence is a mere pretence, a cheat, a gloss
of self-love, and dismisses it with a burst of indignation. He next
considers the less offensive view, that all benevolence and generosity
are resolvable in the last resort into self-love. He does not attribute
to the holders of this opinion any laxity in their own practice of
virtue, as compared with other men. Epicurus and his followers were no
strangers to probity; Atticus and Horace were men of generous
dispositions; Hobbes and Locke were irreproachable in their lives.
These men all allowed that friendship exists without hypocrisy; but
considered that, by a sort of mental chemistry, it might be made out
self-love, twisted and moulded by a particular turn of the imagination.
But, says Hume, as some men have not the turn of imagination, and
others have, this alone is quite enough to make the widest difference
of human characters, and to stamp one man as virtuous and humane, and
another vicious and meanly interested. The analysis in no way sets
aside the reality of moral distinctions. The question is, therefore,
purely speculative.
As a speculation, it is open to these objections. (1) Being contrary to
the unprejudiced notions of mankind, it demands some very powerful aid
from philosophy. On the face of things, the selfish passions and the
benevolent passions are widely distinguished, and no hypothesis has
ever yet so far overcome the disparity as to show that the one could
grow out of the other; we may discern in the attempts that love of
_simplicity_, which has done so much harm to philosophy.
The Animals are susceptible of kindness; shall we then attribute to
them, too, a refinement of self-interest? Again, what interest can a
fond mother have in view who loses her health in attendance on a sick
child, and languishes and dies of grief when relieved from the slavery
of that attendance?
(2) But farther, the real simplicity lies on the side of independent
and disinterested benevolence. There are bodily appetites that carry us
to their objects before sensual enjoyment; hunger and thirst have
eating and drinking for their end; the gratification follows, and
becomes a secondary desire. [A very questionable analysis.] So there
are mental passions, as fame, power, vengeance, that urge us to act, in
the first instance; and when the end is attained, the pleasure follows.
Now, as vengeance may be so pursued as to make us neglect ease,
interest, and safety, why may we not allow to humanity and friendship
the same privileges? [This is Butler, improved in the statement.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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