A Treatise of Human Nature · David Hume
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO VOL. II.
Nay, when the injustice is so distant from us, as no way to affect our interest, it still displeases us, because we consider it as prejudicial to human society, and pernicious to every one that approaches the person guilty of it. We partake of their uneasiness by _sympathy_; and as everything which gives uneasiness in human actions, upon the general survey, is called vice, and whatever produces satisfaction, in the same manner, denominated virtue, this is the reason why the sense of moral good and evil follows upon justice and injustice. And though this sense, in the present case, be derived only from contemplating the actions of others, yet we fail not to extend it even to our own actions. The _general rule_ reaches beyond those instances from which it arose, while at the same time we naturally _sympathise_ with others in the sentiments they entertain of us.’ [1] [1] Vol. II. p. 271. [Book III., part II., sec. II.] Interest and sympathy account for all obligations civil and moral.
59. To this account of the process by which rules of justice have not only come into being, but come to bind our ‘conscience’ as they do, the modern critic will be prompt to object that it is still affected by the ‘unhistorical’ delusions of the systems against which it was directed. In expression, at any rate, it bears the marks of descent from Hobbes, and, if read without due allowance, might convey the notion that society first existed without any sort of justice, and that afterwards its members, finding universal war inconvenient, said to themselves, ‘Go to; let us abstain from each other’s goods.’ It would be hard, however, to expect from Hume the full-blown terminology of development. He would probably have been the first to admit that rules of justice, as well as our feelings towards them, were not made but grew; and in his view of the ‘passions’ whose operation this growth exhibits, he does not seriously differ from the ordinary exponents of the ‘natural history’ of ethics.
These passions, we have seen, are ‘Interest’ and ‘Sympathy,’ which with Hume only differ from the pleasures and desires we call ‘animal’ as any one of these differs from another--the pleasure of eating, for instance, from that of drinking, or desire for the former pleasure from desire for the latter. Nor do their effects in the regulation of society, and in the growth of ‘artificial’ virtues and vices, differ according to his account of them from sentiments which, because they ‘occur to us whether we will or no,’ he reckons purely natural, save in respect of the further extent to which the modifying influence of imagination--itself reacted on by language--must have been carried in order to their existence; and since this in his view is a merely ‘natural’ influence, there can only be a relative difference between the ‘artificiality’ of its more complex, and the ‘naturalness’ of its simpler, products. Locke’s opposition, then, of ‘moral’ to other good, on the ground that other than natural instrumentality is implied in its attainment, will not hold even in regard to that good which, it is admitted, would not be what it is, _i.e._, not a pleasure, but for the intervention of civil law. What is meant by an action which _ought_ to be done.
60. The doctrine, which we have now traversed, of ‘interested’ and ‘moral’ obligation, implicitly answers the question as to the origin and significance of the ethical copula ‘ought.’ It originally expresses, we must suppose, obligation by positive law, or rather by that authoritative custom in which (as Hume would probably have been ready to admit) the ‘general sense of common interest’ first embodies itself. In this primitive meaning it already implies an opposition between the ‘interest which each man has in maintaining order’ and his ‘lesser and more present interests.’ Its meaning will be modified in proportion as the direct interest in maintaining order is reinforced or superseded by sympathy with the general uneasiness which any departure from the rules of justice causes. And as this uneasiness is not confined to cases where the law is directly or in the letter violated, the judgment, that an act _ought_ to be done, not only need not imply a belief that the person, so judging, will himself gain anything by its being done or lose anything by its omission; it need not imply that any positive law requires it. Whether it is applicable to every act ‘causing pleasure on the mere survey’--whether the range of ‘imperfect obligation’ is as wide as that of moral sentiment--Hume does not make clear.
That every action representing a quality ‘fitted to give immediate pleasure to its possessor’ should be virtuous--as according to Hume’s account of the exciting cause of moral sentiment it must be--seems strange enough, but it would be stranger that we should judge of it as an act which _ought_ to be done. It is less difficult, for instance, to suppose that it is virtuous to be witty, than that one ought to be so. Perhaps it would be open to a disciple of Hume to hold that as, according to his master’s showing, an opposition between permanent and present interest is implied in the judgment of obligation as at first formed, so it is when the pleasure to be produced by an act, which gratifies moral sense, is remote rather than near, and a pleasure to others rather than to the doer, that the term ‘ought’ is appropriate to it. Sense of morality no motive: When it seems so the motive is really pride.
61. But though Hume leaves some doubt on this point, he leaves none in regard to the sense in which alone any one can be said to do an action _because he ought_. This must mean that he does it to avoid either a legal penalty or that pain of shame which would arise upon the communication through sympathy of such uneasiness as a contrary act would excite in others upon the survey. So far from its being true that an act, in order to be thoroughly virtuous, must be done for virtue’s sake, ‘no action can be virtuous or morally good unless there is some motive to produce it, distinct from the sense of its morality.’ [1] An act is virtuous on account of the pleasure which supervenes when it is contemplated as proceeding from a motive fitted to produce pleasure to the agent or to others. The presence of this motive, then, being the antecedent condition of the act’s being regarded as virtuous, the motive cannot itself have been a regard to the virtue. It may be replied, indeed, that though this shows ‘regard to virtue’ or ‘sense of morality’ to be not the primary or only virtuous motive, it does not follow that it cannot be a motive at all.
An action cannot be prompted for the first time by desire for a pleasure which can only be felt as a consequence of the action having been done, but it may be repeated, after experience of this pleasure, from desire for its renewal. In like manner, since with Hume the ‘sense of morality’ is not a desire at all but an emotion, and an emotion which cannot be felt till an act of a certain kind has been done, it cannot be the original motive to such an action; but why may not desire for so pleasant an emotion, when once it has been experienced, lead to a repetition of the act? The answer to this question is that the pleasure of moral sentiment, as Hume thinks of it, is essentially a pleasure experienced by a spectator of an act who is other than the doer of it. If the doer and spectator were regarded as one person, there would be no meaning in the rule that the tendency to produce pleasure, which excites the sentiment of approbation, must be a tendency to produce it to the doer himself or others, as distinct from the spectator himself.
Thus pleasure, in the specific form in which Hume would call it ‘moral sentiment,’ is not what any one could attain by his own action, and consequently cannot be a motive to action. Transferred by sympathy to the consciousness of the man whose act is approved, ‘moral sentiment’ becomes ‘pride,’ and desire for the pleasure of pride--otherwise called ‘love of fame’--is one of the ‘virtuous’ motives on which Hume dwells most. When an action, however, is done for the sake of any such positive pleasure, he would not allow apparently that the agent does it ‘from a sense of duty’ or ‘because he ought.’ He would confine this description to cases where the object was rather the avoidance of humiliation. ‘I ought’ means ‘it is expected of me.’ ‘When any virtuous motive or principle is common in human nature, a person who feels his heart devoid of that motive may hate himself’ (strictly, according to Hume’s usage of terms, ‘despise himself’) ‘on that account, and may perform the action without the motive from a certain sense of duty, in order to acquire by practice that virtuous principle, or at least to disguise to himself as much as possible his want of it.’ [2] [1] Vol. II., p. 253. [Book III., part II., sec. I.] [2] Vol. II., p. 253. [Book III., part II., sec. I.]
Distinction between virtuous and vicious motive does not exist for person moved. 62. What difference, then, we have finally to ask, does Hume leave between one motive and another, which can give any significance to the assertion that an act, to be virtuous, must proceed from a virtuous motive? When a writer has so far distinguished between motive and action as to tell us that the moral value of an action depends on its motive--which is what Hume is on occasion ready to tell us--we naturally suppose that any predicate, which he proceeds to apply to the motive, is meant to represent what it is in relation to the subject of it. It cannot be so, however, when Hume calls a motive virtuous. This predicate, as he explains, refers not to an ‘esse’ but to a ‘percipi;’ which means that it does not represent what the motive is to the person whom it moves, but a pleasant feeling excited in the spectator of the act. To the excitement of this feeling it is necessary that the action should not merely from some temporary combination of circumstances produce pleasure for that time and turn, but that the desire, to which the spectator ascribes it, should be one according to his expectation ‘fitted to produce pleasure to the agent or to others.’
In this sense only can Hume consistently mean that virtue in the motive is the condition of virtue in the act, and in this sense the qualification has not much significance for the spectator of the act, and none at all in relation to the doer. It has not much for the spectator, because, according to it, no supposed desire will excite his displeasure and consequently be vicious unless in its general operation it produces a distinct overbalance of pain to the subject of it _and_ to others; [1] and by this test it would be more difficult to show that an unseasonable passion for reforming mankind was _not_ vicious than that moderate lechery was so. It has no significance at all for the person to whom vice or virtue is imputed, because a difference in the results, which others anticipate from any desire that moves him to action, makes no difference in that desire, as he feels and is moved by it. To him, according to Hume, it is simply desire for the pleasure of which the idea is for the time most lively, and, being most lively, cannot but excite the strongest desire. In this--in the character which they severally bear for the subjects of them--the virtuous motive and the vicious are alike.
Hume, it is true, allows that the subject of a vicious desire may become conscious through sympathy of the uneasiness which the contemplation of it causes to others, but if this sympathy were strong enough to neutralize the imagination which excites the desire, the desire would not move him to act. That predominance of anticipated pain over pleasure in the effects of a motive, which renders it vicious to the spectator, cannot be transferred to the imagination of the subject of it without making it cease to be his motive because no longer his strongest desire. A vicious motive, in short, would be a contradiction in terms, if that productivity of pain, which belongs to the motive in the imagination of the spectator, belonged to it also in the imagination of the agent. [1] I write ‘AND to others,’ not ‘OR,’ because according to Hume the production of pleasure to the agent alone is enough to render an action virtuous, if it proceeds from some permanent quality. Thus an action could not be unmistakably vicious unless it tended to produce pain _both_ to the doer and to others. If, though tending to bring pain to others, it had a contrary tendency for the agent himself, there would be nothing to decide whether the viciousness of the former tendency was, or was not, balanced by the virtuousness of the latter.
‘Consciousness of sin’ disappears. 63. Thus the consequence, which we found to be involved in Locke’s doctrine of motives, is virtually admitted by its most logical exponent. Locke’s confusions began when he tried to reconcile his doctrine with the fact of self-condemnation, with the individual’s consciousness of vice as a condition of himself; or, in his own words, to explain how the vicious man could be ‘answerable to himself’ for his vice. Consciousness of vice could only mean consciousness of pleasure wilfully foregone, and since pleasure could not be wilfully foregone, there could be no such consciousness. Hume, as we have seen, cuts the knot by disposing of the consciousness of vice, as a relation in which the individual stands to himself, altogether. A man’s vice is someone else’s displeasure with him, and, if we wish to be precise, we must not speak of self-condemnation or desire for excellence as influencing human conduct, but of aversion from the pain of humiliation and desire for the pleasure of pride--humiliation and pride of that sort of which each man’s sympathy with the feeling of others about him is the condition. Only respectability remains; and even this not consistently accounted for.
64. That such a doctrine leaves large fields of human experience unexplained, few will now dispute. Wesley, Wordsworth, Fichte, Mazzini, and the German theologians, lie between us and the generation in which, to so healthy a nature as Hume’s, and in so explicit a form, it could be possible. Enthusiasm--religious, political, and poetic--if it has not attained higher forms, has been forced to understand itself better since the time when Shaftesbury’s thin and stilted rhapsody was its most intelligent expression. It is now generally agreed that the saint is not explained by being called a fanatic, that there is a patriotism which is not ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ and that we know no more about the poet, when we have been told that he seeks the beautiful, and that what is beautiful is pleasant, than we did before. This admitted, Hume’s Hedonism needs only to be clearly stated to be found ‘unsatisfactory.’ If it ever tends to find acceptance with serious people, it is through confusion with that hybrid, though beneficent, utilitarianism which finds the moral good in the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ without reflecting that desire for such an object, not being for a feeling of pleasure to be experienced by the subject of the desire, is with Hume impossible.
Understood as he himself understood his doctrine, it is only ‘respectability’--the temper of the man who ‘naturally,’ _i.e._, without definite expectation of ulterior gain, seeks to stand well with his neighbours--that it will explain; and this it can only treat as a fixed quantity. Taking for granted the heroic virtue, for which it cannot account, it still must leave it a mystery how the heroic virtue of an earlier age can become the respectability of a later one. Recent literary fashion has led us perhaps unduly to depreciate respectability, but the avowed insufficiency of a moral theory to explain anything beyond it may fairly entitle us to enquire whether it can consistently explain even that. The reason, as we have sufficiently seen, why Hume’s ethical speculation has such an issue is that he does not recognize the constitutive action of self-conscious thought. Misunderstanding our passivity in experience--unaware that it has no meaning except in relation to an object which thought itself projects, yet too clear-sighted to acquiesce in the vulgar notion of either laws of matter or laws of action, as simply thrust upon us from an unaccountable without--he seeks in the mere abstraction of passivity, of feeling which is a feeling of nothing, the explanation of the natural and moral world.
Nature is a sequence of sensations, morality a succession of pleasures and pains. It is under the pressure of this abstraction that he so empties morality of its actual content as to leave only the residuum we have described. Yet to account even for this he has to admit such motives as ‘pride,’ ‘love,’ and ‘interest;’ and each of these, as we have shown, implies that very constitutive action of reason, by ignoring which he compels himself to reduce all morality to that of the average man in his least exalted moments. The formative power of thought, as exhibited in such motives, only differs in respect of the lower degree, to which it has fashioned its matter, from the same power as the source of the ‘desire for excellence,’ of the will autonomous in the service of mankind, of the forever (to us) unfilled ideal of a perfect society. It is because Hume de-rationalizes respectability, that he can find no _rationale_, and therefore no room, for the higher morality.
This might warn us that an ‘ideal’ theory of ethics tampers with its only sure foundation when it depreciates respectability; and if it were our business to extract a practical lesson from him, it would be that there is no other genuine ‘enthusiasm of humanity’ than one which has travelled the common highway of reason--the life of the good neighbour and honest citizen--and can never forget that it is still only on a further stage of the same journey. Our business, however, has not been to moralise, but to show that the philosophy based on the abstraction of feeling, in regard to morals no less than to nature, was with Hume played out, and that the next step forward in speculation could only be an effort to re-think the process of nature and human action from its true beginning in thought. If this object has been in any way attained, so that the attention of Englishmen ‘under five-and-twenty’ may be diverted from the anachronistic systems hitherto prevalent among us to the study of Kant and Hegel, an irksome labour will not have been in vain. T. H. Green.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.