Читать книгу A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution - Cora May Williams - Страница 42

Barratt defines obligation as a "violent motive." Paley says: "If a man finds the pleasure of sin to exceed the remorse of conscience, of which he alone is the judge, the moral-instinct man, so far as I can understand, has nothing more to offer." What, then, asks Barratt, has he himself to offer if a man finds the pleasure of sin to exceed the pain entailed by disobedience to the external command? It may, indeed, be the fact that particular kinds of motive only come from particular sources, but unless we can prove that those coming from a command are always the strongest, we cannot claim for them a position such as that implied by the word obligation, of being the highest or most universal motives. In a contest between two motives, it is not the kind but the quantity which decides. For if two pleasures or pains be equal, what does it matter where they came from? And if they be not equal, the greater, whatever its source, will always be the stronger motive.

"Hence obligation is nothing more than a 'violent motive.' Prudence and duty are both the following of the greatest pleasure; but so far as in ordinary language we make a distinction between them, the pleasure aimed at in prudence is proximate and only slightly greater than the pain, whereas in duty it is not only very considerably greater, but the greatness is further glorified by a dim aureole of magnificent generalities and the halo of an unfathomable future. …

"And as the result of a motive is in no way dependent on its external source, so neither is it influenced by its mode of internal operation. A motive may be strong either by its own natural force as a large excess of associated pleasure in one direction, or by the facility artificially given to its expression by the long-continued custom, either in ourselves or in our fathers, of acting in a certain way on certain occasions. In other words, the strength of a motive is not absolute, it is relative to the habits and predispositions of our organisms; but the strongest motive, whatever its kind, prevails in all cases.

"Obligation is often, again, confounded with compulsion: but submission to physical force is not morally an act at all, because its αρχη or immediate antecedent is external to us, and therefore independent of our moral laws."