are essentially laws of God, which men are impelled to obey, solely or
mainly, from fear or hope of divine punishments or rewards; and some
such view as this seems to be widely accepted, by plain men without
very refined moral sensibilities.
As an example, again, of thinkers who, while recognising in human
nature a disinterested regard for duty or virtue as such, still
consider that self-love is a proper and legitimate motive to right
conduct, we may refer to Butler and his disciples. Butler regards
“reasonable self-love” as not merely a normal motive to human action,
but as being--no less than conscience--a “chief or superior principle
in the nature of man”; so that an action “becomes unsuitable” to this
nature, if the principle of self-love be violated. Accordingly the
aim of his teaching is not to induce men to choose duty rather than
interest, but to convince them that there is no inconsistency between
the two; that self-love and conscience lead “to one and the same course
of life.”
This intermediate doctrine appears to me to be more in harmony with
the common sense of mankind on the whole than either of the extreme
views before contrasted. But I do not conceive that any one of the
three positions is inconsistent with fundamental assumptions of the
Intuitional method. Even those who hold that human beings cannot
reasonably be expected to conform to moral rules disinterestedly, or
from any other motive than that supplied by the sanctions divinely
attached to them, still commonly conceive God as supreme Reason,
whose laws must be essentially reasonable: and so far as such laws
are held to be cognisable by the ‘light of nature’--so that morality,
as Locke says, may be placed among demonstrative sciences--the method
of determining them will be none the less intuitional because it is
combined with the belief that God will reward their observance and
punish their violation. On the other hand those who hold that regard
for duty as duty is an indispensable condition of acting rightly,
would generally admit that acting rightly is not adequately defined as
acting from a pure desire to act rightly; that though, in a certain
sense, a man who sincerely desires and intends to act rightly does all
he can, and completely fulfils duty, still such a man may have a wrong
judgment as to the particulars of his duty, and therefore, in another
sense, may act wrongly. If this be admitted, it is evident that, even
on the view that the desire or resolution to fulfil duty as such is
essential to right action, a distinction between two kinds of rightness
is required; which we may express by saying that an act is--on this
view--“formally”[163] right, if the agent in willing is moved by pure
desire to fulfil duty or chooses duty for duty’s sake; “materially”
right, if he intends the right particular effects. This distinction
being taken, it becomes plain that there is no reason why the same
principles and method for determining material rightness, or rightness
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