Both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson were often led astray by a tendency to interpret facts as they wished them to be, rather than as they were. Their view of the consequences of action was coloured by their optimism. Butler, too, in spite of the difference in his general attitude to the value of human life, was not altogether free from a similar error. He thinks that Shaftesbury "has shown beyond all contradiction that virtue is naturally the interest of happiness, and vice the misery of such a creature as man."[100] But, in view of particular exceptions, or of any one not being convinced of "this happy tendency of virtue," he thinks it necessary to emphasise the "natural authority of the principle of reflection." Conscience is, he holds, a part of our inward nature; but it differs from the other parts of our nature inasmuch as it is not related immediately to an external object, but to the actions dealing with such objects, and to the dispositions leading to those actions. It is a principle of "reflex approbation or disapprobation," which is said to have equal respect to both public and private good. This tendency, however, would seem to be ascertained empirically. The deliverances of conscience are immediate judgments as to the morality of actions and affections (for Butler speaks of it as referring to both equally); and its reference to the ends which those actions or the exercise of these affections may ultimately tend to would, therefore, seem to be indirect.[101] Butler was careful, moreover, not to speak of it as an æsthetic or sensitive faculty, but as a judgment. It is not a feeling of pleasure, but the revelation of law. [Sidenote: and the criterion of morality.] The approval of conscience is thus made the criterion of morality. But a difficulty arises as to the way in which we are to regard the authority which conscience is said to carry along with it. Butler's utterances here commonly imply a teleological reference to an end implanted in human nature, and to be discovered by observing that nature--the realisation of the end being obligatory, because it is shown to be the purpose which the author of nature had in view in making man as he is.[102] The authority of conscience thus seems to be derived from the divine purpose which it displays. It carries within itself a claim to obedience; but the justification of this claim depends on a theological basis. And hence the question of the nature and origin of conscience is at once raised, in order to determine the legitimacy of its claim to be, rather than any other part of our constitution, a divinely-implanted guide. [Sidenote: Teleological and jural views not reconciled, nor fully developed.]