of private happiness as a thing to be looked for, or in any way taken into account, in conduct which is the result of calm deliberation. It is difficult, therefore, to avoid the judgment passed upon them by Schleiermacher, that "the English school of Shaftesbury, with all their talk about virtue, are really given up to pleasure."[81] [Sidenote: 3. Ethics may be made to depend on the moral sense.] At the same time, their writings constantly suggest a theory of morals which is neither obliged to adopt off-hand a utilitarian criterion of virtue, nor forced to fall back upon the egoistic sanctions of personal pleasure and pain. Their psychological theory points to an ethical doctrine in which pleasure is neither the sole end of action, nor its sole motive. They do not, indeed, make quite clear the transition from the psychological to the ethical point of view; and critics are still fond of confronting Butler with the objection he anticipated--Why ought I to obey my conscience? The apparent _petitio principii_ of Butler's answer, Because it is the law of your nature, is due to the way in which the teleological standpoint is introduced. The purpose of which (according to Butler) man is the vehicle or realising organism is spoken of as a law externally imposed, and deriving its authority, not from its own nature, but from the nature of its origin. [Sidenote: Different views of the nature of the moral sense.] There would seem to be one way only to surmount the difficulty arising from the variety of impulses of which the nature of man is made up, and that is by consistently following out the teleological point of view. But what, the question is, is the final or comprehensive end to which human nature points amidst this diversity of objects of striving? The doctrine of the "moral sense" attempts to answer the question. Now this moral sense may either be regarded as not itself a separate faculty, but simply an expression for the harmony of human tendencies; or it may be looked upon as a separate and superior capacity, which, again, may either be interpreted in terms of sense, or of the understanding--the former interpretation leading to its identification with pleasure, the latter to its being conceived as law. * * * * * [Sidenote: (_a_) The harmony of impulses. Shaftesbury's theory.]