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It will perhaps be argued that even though this or that moral principle, or even all moral principles hitherto laid down, fail to be objectively valid or express a moral truth, there may nevertheless be in the human mind some “faculty” which makes the pronouncement of objectively valid moral judgments possible. There are so many “theoretical” truths which have never been discovered, and yet we have in our intellect a “faculty” enabling us to pronounce judgments that are true. So also moralists of different normative schools of ethics maintain that we possess a faculty which can pronounce true moral judgments. This faculty has been called by names like “moral sense,” “conscience,” or “practical” or “moral reason,” or been simply included under the general terms “reason” or “understanding.”

According to the moral sense school, the morality or immorality of conduct is discriminated by a special sense “implanted” in us for this purpose. It perceives virtue and vice as the eye perceives light and darkness. Shaftesbury observes that man possesses “natural affections, which lead to the good of the publick”; “self-affections, which lead only to the good of the private”; and “unnatural affections,” which lead neither to public nor private good. Virtue consists in a harmony or proper balance between the two first kinds of affections; and it is by means of the moral sense that we can tell whether these affections are 36properly balanced or not.1 Its verdict is final: neither the applause of custom nor the sanction of religion can ever alter “the eternal measures, and immutable independent nature of worth and virtue.”2 According to Hutcheson, again, our moral sense proves that the essence of virtue consists in benevolence: “that action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery.”3 It has often been remarked that the term “moral sense” is a misnomer: this supposed “faculty” not only lacks a bodily organ, but its perceptions lack the uniformity which characterizes our sensations under similar physiological conditions.4 It is essentially an emotional faculty. Shaftesbury says that a natural affection, which is “an original one of earliest rise in the soul or affectionate part,” makes the sense of right and wrong5—that is, the moral sense; and that this sense “must consist in a real antipathy or aversion to injustice or wrong, and a real affection or love towards equity and right, for its own sake, and on account of its own natural beauty and worth.”6 Hutcheson writes in his work, the Inquiry:—“Some actions have to men an immediate goodness; … by a superior sense, which I call a moral one, we approve the actions of others, and perceive them to be their perfection and dignity, and are determin’d to love the agent; a like perception we have in reflecting on such actions of our own, without any 37view of natural advantage from them.”7 In his later works he also assigns some importance to reason in the process attending moral decisions;8 yet the understanding “judges about the means or the subordinate ends: but about the ultimate ends there is no reasoning.”9 Rationalistic moralists have justly made the objection to this moral sense theory that it is totally unable to give any objective validity to the moral perceptions.10 In his criticism of it Kant observes that “feelings which naturally differ infinitely in degree cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has any one a right to form judgments for others by his own feelings.”11 Hutcheson himself frankly admits that “every one judges the affections of others by his own sense; so that it seems not impossible that in these senses men might differ as they do in taste.”12

1 Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, ii. (London, 1733), p. 86 sqq. The expression “moral sense”—which is rarely used by him—is found in the marginal notes ibid. pp. 41, 42, 44-46, 53 sq., and in the text p. 46.

2 Ibid., ii. 35 sq.

3 F. Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (London, 1753), p. 185.

4 Cf. S. Spalding, The Philosophy of Christian Morals (London, 1843), p. 315 sq.

5 Shaftesbury, op. cit., ii. 44 sq.

6 Ibid., ii. 42.

7 Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (London, 1753), p. 100 sq.

8 Cf. W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge, 1900), p. 204 sqq.

9 Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, i. (London, 1755), p. 38.

10 E.g., H. Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, i. (London, 1924), p. 144 sqq.

11 I. Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, sec. ii. (Gesammelte Schriften, iv. [Berlin, 1911], p. 442; T. K. Abbott’s translation in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and other Works on the Theory of Ethics [London, 1898], p. 61).

12 Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections. With Illustrations on the Moral Sense (London, 1756), p. 237.

Butler calls “the moral faculty” conscience, but as a synonym for it he frequently uses the term “principle of reflection.” It has two aspects, a purely cognitive and an authoritative, and on its cognitive side it “pronounces determinately some actions to be in themselves just, right, good; others to be in themselves evil, wrong, unjust.”13 38Sometimes he even calls it reason. But his dominant view seems to be that which lays stress on the instinctive intuition rather than the reflection.14 He says:—“In all common ordinary cases we see intuitively at first view what is our duty.… This is the ground of the observation, that the first thought is often the best. In these cases doubt and deliberation is itself dishonesty.… That which is called considering what is our duty in a particular case, is very often nothing but endeavouring to explain it away.”15 But how, then, is it that different consciences so often issue conflicting orders? This question is never raised by Butler. He gives us no criterion of rightness and wrongness apart from the voice of conscience.16 It has been said that when Butler and other intuitionist writers refer to the conscience as the supreme principle of morals, they do not mean by it a “private conscience” but rather what may be called “the universal conscience”—that ultimate recognition of the rightness and wrongness of actions which is latent in all men, but which in some men is more fully developed than in others.17 Whewell wrote:—39“As each man has his reason, in virtue of his participation in the common reason of mankind, so each man has his conscience, in virtue of his participation in the common conscience of mankind.… As the object of reason is to determine what is true, so the object of conscience is to determine what is right. As each man’s reason may err, and thus lead him to a false opinion, so each man’s conscience may err, and lead him to a false moral standard. As false opinion does not disprove the reality of truth, so the false moral standards of men do not disprove the reality of a supreme rule of human action.”18 This appeal to a mysterious universal conscience as an infallible judge of right and wrong merely assumes the existence of an objectively valid standard in morals instead of proving it. For Butler conscience really represented the will of God.

13 J. Butler, Sermon II.—Upon Human Nature, § 8 (Works, i. [London, 1900], p. 45).

14 Cf. J. Bonar, Moral Sense (London, 1930), p. 64.

15 Butler, Sermon VII.—Upon the Character of Balaam, § 14 (Works, i. 100).

16 Cf. J. M. Wilson and T. Fowler, The Principles of Morals (Introductory Chapters) (Oxford, 1886), p. 56; C. D. Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory (London, 1930), p. 82 sq. Professor A. E. Taylor (“Some Features of Butler’s Ethics,” in Mind, N. S. xxxv. [London, 1926], p. 276 sq.) says that it is no fault of the Sermons, in which Butler’s ethical doctrine is chiefly conveyed to us, that they did not consider the possibility of conflicting moral codes and the grounds on which a choice could be made between them, because the object of the preacher was to impress on his audience the necessity of conducting their lives virtuously, and they would be agreed, in all essentials, on the question what sort of conduct is right and wrong. But his disregard of the apparent or real variations in the deliverance of “conscience” certainly obscures his ethical theory in its most essential point.

17 J. S. Mackenzie, A Manual of Ethics (London, 1929), p. 150. See also Taylor, loc. cit., p. 291.

18 W. Whewell, The Elements of Morality including Polity (Cambridge, 1864), p. 151. In the same sense Th. Lipps (Die ethischen Grundfragen [Leipzig & Hamburg, 1912], p. 181) speaks of the “absolute” conscience.

Cudworth, Clarke, Price, and Reid are names that recall to our mind a theory according to which the morality of actions is perceived by the intellect, just as are number, diversity, causation, proportion. “Morality is eternal and immutable,” says Richard Price. “Right and wrong, it appears, denote what actions are. Now whatever anything is, that it is, not by will, or decree, or power, but by nature and necessity. Whatever a triangle or circle is, that it is unchangeably and eternally.… The same is to be said of right and wrong, of moral good and evil, as far as they express real characters of actions. They must immutably and necessarily belong to those actions of which they are truly affirmed.”19 And as having a real existence 40outside the mind, they can only be discerned by the understanding. It is true that this discernment is accompanied with an emotion:—“Some impressions of pleasure or pain, satisfaction or disgust, generally attend our perceptions of virtue and vice. But these are merely their effects and concomitants, and not the perceptions themselves.”20 Samuel Clarke is of opinion that if a man endowed with reason denies the eternal and necessary moral differences of things, it is the very same “as if a man that has the use of his sight, should at the same time that he beholds the sun, deny that there is any such thing as light in the world; or as if a man that understands Geometry or Arithmetick, should deny the most obvious and known propositions of lines or numbers.”21

19 R. Price, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (London, 1787), pp. 63, 74 sq.

20 Price, op. cit., p. 63.

21 S. Clarke, A Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation (London, 1732), p. 179.

Since the days of Kant moral judgments have been referred to a special faculty or a part of the general faculty of reason, called “practical” or “moral” reason, as the source of the objective validity assigned to them; according to Kant the speculative and the practical reason “can ultimately be only one and the same reason which has to be distinguished merely in its application.”22 The very existence of this mysterious faculty presupposes that there really are self-evident or axiomatic moral propositions; hence if no such proposition can be shown to exist we have no right whatever to postulate that there is a faculty which ever could give us any. It is perfectly clear that Kant assumed the objectivity of duty, and that this assumption led him to the idea of a pure practical reason, 41not vice versa.23 He needed a faculty to explain the moral law, which he regarded as a fact of pure reason, “of which we are a priori conscious, and which is apodictically certain,” and the objective reality of which “cannot be proved by any deduction by any efforts of theoretical reason.”24 The same is the case with Sidgwick. In referring moral judgments to reason he simply means to imply their objectivity, i.e., that “what I judge ought to be must, unless I am in error, be similarly judged by all rational beings who judge truly of the matter”; he does not mean “to prejudice the question whether valid moral judgments are normally attained by a process of reasoning from universal principles or axioms, or by direct intuition of the particular duties of individuals.”25 Dr. Rashdall writes:—“We may if we like call Practical Reason a separate faculty from speculative Reason—that is only a question of words. We really mean simply that they are distinguishable aspects of one and the same rational self. The important thing is that we should recognize that moral judgments possess an absolute truth or falsity, which is equally valid for all rational beings; and, if that is recognized, it seems most natural to ascribe them to Reason.”26

22 Kant, op. cit., Vorrede (Gesammelte Schriften, iv. 391; Abbott’s translation, p. 7). See also Idem, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, i. 1. 3 (Gesammelte Schriften, v. [Berlin, 1913], p. 89 sqq.; Abbott, p. 182 sqq.).

23 Cf. A. Hägerström, Kants Ethik (Uppsala, 1902), p. 594.

24 Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, i. 1. 1. 8 (v. 47; Abbott, p. 136).

25 H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London, 1913), p. 33.

26 Rashdall, op. cit., i. 166.

The question to be answered, then, is whether any of the moral principles that have been regarded as self-evident really is so. If ethics is to be taken as the term for a normative science, I agree with Professor Moore’s statement that “the fundamental principles of Ethics must be self-evident.” I also agree with him when he says:—“The expression ‘self-evident’ means properly that the proposition 42so called is evident or true, by itself alone; that it is not an inference from some proposition other than itself. The expression does not mean that the proposition is true, because it is evident to you or me or all mankind, because in other words it appears to us to be true. That a proposition appears to be true can never be a valid argument that true it really is.”27 Just as the statement “this proposition is true” does not mean the same as to say, “I consider this proposition to be true,” so also the statement “this moral principle is self-evident” does not mean the same as to say, “this moral principle appears self-evident to me.” But how, then, can I know if a proposition is really self-evident or only supposed to be so? In the case of theoretical truths no truth is considered to have a claim to self-evidence which is not generally accepted as self-evident or axiomatic by all those whose intellect is sufficiently developed to have an opinion on the matter worthy of any consideration at all. It is true, as Kant said, that universal assent does not prove the objective validity of a judgment28—indeed, there are mathematical axioms that have been called in question although they have passed current for centuries; but, to speak with Sidgwick, the absence of disagreement between experts must be an indispensable negative condition of the certainty of our beliefs.29 In the case of moral principles enunciated as self-evident truths disagreement is rampant.

27 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1922), p. 143.

28 Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Vorrede (v. 12 sq.; Abbott, p. 98).

29 Supra, p. 12 sq.

The great variability of moral judgments does not of course eo ipso disprove the possibility of self-evident moral intuitions. It is incompatible with that cruder kind 43of intuitionism which maintains that some moral faculty directly passes true moral judgments on particular courses of conduct at the moment of action. But what about the differences of opinion as regards the great moral principles that are supposed to be self-evident? Dr. Rashdall writes:—“Neither the slow development of the moral faculty nor its unequal development in different individuals at the same level of social culture forms any objection to the a priori character of moral judgments. We do not doubt either the axioms of Mathematics or the rules of reasoning, because some savages cannot count more than five, or because some highly educated classical scholars are incapable of understanding the fifth proposition of Euclid’s first book.… Self-evident truths are not truths which are evident to everybody. There are degrees of moral illumination just as there are degrees of musical sensibility or of mathematical acuteness.”30 But is it really possible to assume that defective “moral illumination” could sufficiently explain the existence of so many different ethical theories, each of which is based on one or more principles regarded as self-evident intuitions, and as to some of which there is the same disagreement now as there was two thousand years ago? How can there be such a great diversity of opinion among “moral specialists” with regard to propositions that are assumed to be axioms? Some of these specialists say it is an axiom that I ought not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another; whilst others not only deny the self-evidence, but thoroughly disagree with the contents, of this proposition. According to Sidgwick the proposition that pleasure is the only rational ultimate end of action is an object of intuition;31 according to Dr. Moore, also a professor of moral philosophy, the untruth of this proposition44 is self-evident.32 The latter finds it self-evident that good cannot be defined;33 but others, who have no smaller claim to the epithet “moral specialists,” are of the very contrary opinion. What should we say if two professors of mathematics quarrelled about the axiom that “if equals be added to equals the wholes are equal,” to which Sidgwick compares one of his moral axioms?34

30 Rashdall, op. cit., i. 84 sq.

31 Supra, p. 15.

32 Moore, op. cit., pp. 75, 144.

33 Ibid., pp. 6, 8, 148.

34 Supra, p. 9.

There are no doubt moral propositions which really are certain and self-evident, for the simple reason that they are tautological, that the predicate is but a repetition of the subject; and moral philosophy contains a great number of such tautologies, from the days of Plato and Aristotle to the present times. But apart from such cases, which of course tell us nothing, I am not aware of any moral principle that could be said to be truly self-evident. The presumed self-evidence is only a matter of opinion; and in some cases one might even be inclined to quote Mr. Bertrand Russell’s statement that “if self-evidence is alleged as a ground of belief, that implies that doubt has crept in, and that our self-evident proposition has not wholly resisted the assaults of scepticism.”35 None of the various theories of normative science can be said to have proved its case; none of them has proved that moral judgments possess objective validity, that there is anything truly good or bad, right or wrong, that moral principles express anything more than the opinions of those who believe in them.

35 B. Russell, The Analysis of Mind (London, 1922), p. 263. See also H. H. Joachim, The Nature of Truth (Oxford, 1906), p. 55.

But what, then, has made moralists believe that moral judgments possess an objective validity which none of 45them has been able to prove? What has induced them to construct their theories of normative ethics? What has allured them to invent a science the subject-matter of which—the objectively good or right—is not even known to exist? The answer is not difficult to find. It has often been remarked that there is much greater agreement among moralists on the question of moral practice than on the question of theory. When they are trying to define the ultimate end of right conduct or to find the essence of right and wrong, they give us the most contradictory definitions or explanations—as Leslie Stephen said, we find ourselves in a “region of perpetual antinomies, where controversy is everlasting, and opposite theories seem to be equally self-evident to different minds.”36 But when they pass to a discussion of what is right and wrong in concrete cases, in the various circumstances of life, the disagreement is reduced to a surprising extent. They all tell us that we should be kind to our neighbour, that we should respect his life and property, that we should speak the truth, that we should live in monogamy and be faithful husbands or wives, that we should be sober and temperate, and so forth. This is what makes books on ethics, when they come to the particular rules of life, so exceedingly monotonous and dull; for even the most controversial and pugnacious theorist becomes then quite tame and commonplace. And the reason for this is that all ethical theories are as a matter of fact based on the morality of common sense. Professor Carveth Read rightly observes:—“We cannot be so deceived as to imagine that the moral rules that may seem to be conclusions in any system, are really inferences from its characteristic 46conceptions. With some slight qualifications, the rules are rules of Common Sense, and are the premises, the true principia, from which the theory is inferred. To agree with them on the whole is a test that no theory can ever evade.”37 So also normative ethics has adopted the common sense idea that there is something right and wrong independently of what is thought to be right or wrong. People are not willing to admit that their moral convictions are a mere matter of opinion, and look upon convictions differing from their own as errors. If asked why there is so much diversity of opinion on moral questions, and consequently so many errors, they would probably argue that there would be unanimity as regards the rightness or wrongness of a given course of conduct if everybody possessed a sufficient knowledge of the case and all the attendant circumstances and if, at the same time, everybody had a sufficiently developed moral consciousness—which practically would mean a moral consciousness as enlightened and developed as their own. This characteristic of the moral judgments of common sense is shared by the judgments of philosophers, and is at the bottom of their reasoned arguments in favour of the objectivity of moral values.

36 L. Stephen, The Science of Ethics (London, 1882), p. 2. Cf. H. Sidgwick, “My Station and Its Duties,” in International Journal of Ethics, iv. (Philadelphia, etc., 1893), p. 13 sq.

37 Carveth Read, Natural and Social Morals (London, 1909), p. 9.

The common sense idea that moral judgments possess objective validity is itself regarded as a proof of their really possessing such validity. It is argued that the moral judgment “claims objectivity,” that it asserts a value which is found in that on which it is pronounced. “This is the meaning of the judgment,” says Professor Sorley. “It is not about a feeling or attitude of, or any relation to, the subject who makes the judgment.”38 Dr. Rashdall 47writes:—“Is not this idea of objectivity just the most fundamental of our moral convictions?… If there is in the human mind this consciousness of an objective ‘ought,’ it must be derived from the intellectual part of our nature … If the notion of duty is as inexpugnable a notion of the human mind as the notion of quantity or cause or substance or the like, we have every reason that we can possibly have for believing in its objective validity.”39 Yet in another place he implicitly admits that, after all, there is in point of universality some difference between these notions. He admits that most, and possibly the whole, of the savage’s actual morality and of his intellectual beliefs about morality can be satisfactorily explained upon the emotional view; and he says that it would not matter, for the purpose of his argument, if we had to ascend to a comparatively advanced stage in the development of morality before we reached any ideas about human conduct that could be described as a sense of duty.40 The whole argument is really reduced to the assumption that an idea—in this case the idea of the validity of moral judgments—which is generally held, or held by more or less advanced minds, must be true: people claim objective validity for the moral judgment, therefore it must possess such validity. The only thing that may be said in favour of such an argument is, that if the definition of a moral proposition implies the claim to objectivity, a judgment that does not express this quality cannot be a moral judgment; but this by no means proves that moral propositions so defined are true—the predicated objectivity may be a sheer illusion.

38 W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (Cambridge, 1924). p. 150.

39 H. Rashdall, Is Conscience an Emotion? (London, 1914), pp. 34, 36, 39.

40 Ibid., p. 70 sq.

Well then, it might be argued, if you do not admit that 48there is anything objectively right or wrong, you must not use these or any other moral predicates, because if you do, you assign to them a meaning that they do not possess. But what about other predicates which are also formally objective and yet, when we more carefully consider the matter are admitted to be merely subjective estimates? The aesthetic judgment makes claim to objectivity: when people say that something is beautiful, they generally mean something more than that it gives, or has a tendency to give, them aesthetic enjoyment; and there are also many philosophers who uphold the objectivity of beauty and maintain that the beauties of nature exist apart from a beholding eye or a hearing ear. But even those who agree with Hume that beauty is no quality in things themselves, but exists merely in the mind which contemplates them,41 do not hesitate to speak of “beauty,” and would consider it absurd to be taken to task for doing so. Sidgwick admits that if I say “the air is sweet” or “the food is disagreeable,” it would not be exactly true that I mean no more than that I like the one or dislike the other, although, if my statement is challenged, I shall probably content myself with affirming the existence of such feelings in my own mind.42 So also, if anybody calls a certain wine or cigar good, there is some objectivity implied in the judgment, and however willing he is to recognize that the so-called goodness is a mere matter of taste, he will certainly, even if he is a philosopher, continue to call the wine or cigar good, just as before. Or, to take an instance from the sphere of knowledge: Hume, in expounding his own view, still speaks with the man in the street of objects and processes in nature, although his very aim is to convince 49us that what we know is really limited to impressions and ideas. And every one of us makes use of the words sunrise and sunset, which are expressions from a time when people thought that the sun rose and set, though nobody now holds this view. Why, then, should not the ethical subjectivist be allowed to use the old terms for moral qualities, although he maintains that the objective validity generally implied in them is a mere illusion? Dr. Rashdall himself, as we just saw, speaks of an emotional “morality” among savages, that is, a morality without validity.

41 D. Hume, “Essay xxiii.—Of the Standard of Taste,” in Philosophical Works, iii. (London, 1875), p. 268.

42 Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 27.

There is thus a very general tendency to assign objectivity to our subjective experience, and this tendency is particularly strong and persistent with regard to our moral experience. Why we attribute validity to it is of course a matter that does not trouble the moral intuitionist any more than the mathematician looks for a ground for his axioms. He is not concerned with the question of origins. Professor Moore says that the questions as to the origin of people’s moral feelings and ideas are of course “not without interest, and are subjects of legitimate curiosity,” but “only form one special branch of Psychology or Anthropology.”43 And Professor Sorley remarks that when we ask, “Why do we assign validity to our moral approval and to moral ideas generally?” the history of their genesis gives us no answer.44 For my own part I maintain, on the contrary, that an examination into the history of the moral consciousness of mankind gives us a clue to its supposed objectivity, as well as to its other characteristics.

43 G. E. Moore, Ethics (London, s.d.), p. 130 sq.

44 Sorley, op. cit., p. 64.

People are generally inclined to assume that what makes a certain impression upon their minds also makes a similar impression upon the minds of others. This assumption50 is very largely confirmed by facts; and, generally speaking, people’s inclination to generalize their judgments is greater in proportion as the impressions are found to be similar in each particular case. If “there is no disputing of tastes,” that is because taste is so very variable; and yet even in this instance we recognize a certain standard by speaking of a “good” and a “bad” taste. On the other hand, if the appearance of objectivity in the moral judgments is so illusive as to make it seem necessary to refer them to reason, that is partly on account of the comparatively uniform nature of the moral consciousness. Society is the school in which we learn to distinguish between right and wrong. The headmaster is Custom, and the lessons are the same for all the members of the community. The first moral judgments were pronounced by public opinion; public indignation and public approval are the prototypes of the moral emotions. As regards questions of morality there was in early society no difference of opinion; hence a character of universality was from the very beginning attached to the moral judgments. And when, with advancing civilization, this unanimity was to some extent disturbed by individuals who ventured to dissent from the opinions of the majority, the disagreement largely arose from circumstances which did not affect the moral principle itself, but had reference only to its application, that is, from circumstances of a purely intellectual character, from the knowledge of, or attention paid to, positive facts.

But besides the relative uniformity of moral opinions and the possibility of considerably harmonizing conflicting opinions by a demonstration of facts, there are other circumstances which have in a large measure contributed to the strong belief in moral truths. From our earliest childhood we are taught that certain acts are right and 51that others are wrong. The leading-string in the child’s ethical growth is, all the time, the presence of other persons, whose “word of command” is authoritative and not to be trifled with.45 There is further the authority of public opinion, custom, and law, with disagreeable consequences for those who act contrary to their decrees. There is the influence of some great teacher whose mind was ruled by the ideal of moral perfection, and whose words became sacred on account of his supreme wisdom, like Confucius or Buddha, or on religious grounds, like Jesus. There is the belief in an all-wise and all-powerful God, whose will is the supreme law and who inflicts punishment on the transgressor. And besides the external authority of the rules of conduct there is the internal authority assigned to the moral law, the sense of obligatoriness, which has much impressed moralists of different schools. It filled Kant with the same awe as the star-spangled firmament. According to Butler, conscience is “a faculty in kind and in nature supreme over all others, and which bears its own authority of being so.”46 Its supremacy is said to be “felt and tacitly acknowledged by the worst no less than by the best of men.”47 Adam Smith calls the moral faculties the “vicegerents of God within us,” who “never fail to punish the violation of them by the torments of inward shame and self-condemnation; and, on the contrary, always reward obedience with tranquillity of mind, with contentment, and self-satisfaction.”48 Even Hutcheson, who raises the question why the 52moral sense should not vary in different men as the palate does, considers it from its very nature “to be designed for regulating and controlling all our powers.”49

45 Cf. J. M. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development (New York, 1897), p. 298.

46 Butler, Sermon II—Upon Human Nature, § 8 (Works, i. 45).

47 Dugald Stewart, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man, i. (Edinburgh, 1828), p. 302.

48 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (London, 1887), p. 235.

49 Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, i. 61.

The authority of the moral law has been taken as a clear manifestation of the objectivity of duty and as a testimony of the subjectivistic fallacy. “If moral approbation is a mere feeling,” says Dr. Rashdall, “how can it claim any superiority over other feelings?”50 But if all external motives of a social and religious character be put aside, it may be fairly asked if the influence of the moral law upon the conduct of men is really so great as well-meaning moralists try to make us believe. It does not seem to command obedience in any exceptional degree, the regard for it can hardly be called the mainspring of action. It is only one spring out of many, and variable like all others. In some instances it may be a dominant power in a man’s life, in others it is a voice calling in the wilderness; and the majority of people seem to be more afraid of the blame or ridicule of their fellowmen, or of the penalties with which the law of the country threatens them, than of “the vicegerents of God” in their own hearts. Kant speaks of “the peace of conscience of so many (in their own opinion conscientious) men, when … they have merely had the good fortune to escape bad consequences.”51 It has been said that mankind prefer the possession of virtue to all other enjoyments, and look upon vice as worse than any other misery;52 that the pleasures and pains of conscience are in the normally constituted mind far more intense 53and durable than any other pleasures or pains.53 But as a matter of fact, the obedience to the moral law, as to any ordinary law, is seldom accompanied with any distinct feeling of pleasure at all: the “good” conscience chiefly means the absence of a bad one.54 And as for the bad conscience, I think we may agree with Leslie Stephen that “most men find nothing easier than to suppress its stings, when some immediately bad consequence, or the contempt and abhorrence of their neighbours, does not constantly instil the venom.”55 It is said that virtue bears in itself its own reward, and vice its own punishment. But what an unjust retributor conscience is. The more a person habituates himself to virtue the more he sharpens its sting, the deeper he sinks in vice the more he blunts it. While the best men have the most sensitive consciences, the worst have hardly any conscience at all. We are reminded that men are rewarded for good and punished for bad acts by the moral approval or disapproval of their neighbours. But public opinion and law judge of detected acts only; their judgment is seldom based upon an exhaustive examination of the case; all that they require is formal compliance with the more elementary rules of duty. Moreover, 54a person is respected or praised, blamed or despised, on other grounds than his moral qualities; indeed, the admiration which men feel for intellectual superiority, artistic genius, courage, strength, or even accidental success, is often more intense than the admiration they feel for virtue. Thus the supposed supremacy of the moral law receives but scanty recognition in the practice and actual feelings of men. And to say that, whether its dictates are obeyed or not, they ought to be obeyed—or, as Butler put it, that conscience, “had it strength, as it has right; had it power, as it has manifest authority,… would absolutely govern the world”56—is simply to say that what ought to be ought to be. There are even philosophers who have actually denied that the moral values are the highest of all values.57

50 Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, i. 143.

51 Kant, Von der Einwohnung des bösen Princips neben dem guten, 3 (Gesammelte Schriften, vi. [Berlin, 1914], p. 38; Abbott’s translation, p. 345).

52 Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Beauty and Virtue, p. 252.

53 T. Fowler, Progressive Morality (London, 1895), p. 39.

54 Cf. L. Feuerbach, Sämmtliche Werke, x. (Stuttgart, 1911), p. 283; N. H. Bang, Begrebet Moral (Köbenhavn, 1897), p. 168; M. Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik (Halle a. d. S., 1927), p. 334. Kant (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1, 2. 2. 2 [v. 117; Abbott, p. 214]) says that the consciousness of virtue is accompanied, not with enjoyment, but with self-contentment, “which in its proper signification always designates only a negative satisfaction in one’s existence, in which one is conscious of needing nothing.” Yet in his discussion of duties of “indeterminate obligation” (Einleitung zur Tugendlehre, §7 [Gesammelte Schriften, vi. [Berlin, 1914], p. 391; Abbott, p. 301]) he speaks of “a moral pleasure which goes beyond mere satisfaction with one’s self (which may be merely negative), and of which it is proudly said that in this consciousness virtue is its own reward.”

55 Stephen, op. cit., p. 319.

56 Butler, Sermon II.—Upon Human Nature, § 14 (Works, i. 48).

57 Cf. H. Münsterberg, Der Ursprung der Sittlichkeit (Freiburg i. B., 1889), p. 115: “Man muss klar und unbeirrt erkennen, dass … sittlich wertlose Handlungen für die Entwickelung und Vervollkommnung der Menschheit unendlich wertvoller sein können, als es sittliche Leistungen sind”; G. Freudenberg, Grenzen der Ethik (Leipzig, 1927), p. 129 sq.: “Es ist ein grundsätzliches Missverständnis, der Ethik die Frage zu stellen, ob die ethischen Werte ‘hoher’ oder ‘niedriger’ als andere Werte seien. Offenbar wird ja auch über das Wesen der Musik gar nichts ausgesagt, wenn man sie als die höchste der Künste bezeichnet.”

The authority assigned to conscience is really only an echo of the social or religious sanctions of conduct: it belongs to the “public” or the religious conscience, vox populi or vox dei. In theory it may be admitted that every man ought to act in accordance with his conscience. But this phrase is easily forgotten when, in any matter of importance, the individual’s conscience comes into conflict with the common sense of his community; or doubt may be thrown upon the sincerity of his professed convictions, or he may be blamed for having such a conscience as he has. There are philosophers, like Hobbes and Hegel, who 55have denied the citizen the right of having a private conscience. The other external source from which authority has been instilled into the moral law is the alliance between morality and religion. In spite of all his efforts to base his own moral theory on a non-theological basis, Dr. Rashdall feels compelled to admit that, in his opinion, the belief in God is the logical presupposition of an “objective” or absolute morality. “A moral ideal,” he says, “can exist nowhere and nohow but in a mind; an absolute moral ideal can exist only in a Mind from which all Reality is derived. Our moral ideal can only claim objective validity in so far as it can rationally be regarded as the revelation of a moral ideal eternally existing in the mind of God.”58 So also Professor Bohlin, after a penetrating review of the claim to objective validity made by normative moralists, arrives at the conclusion that only a divine revelation can give morality such a validity.59 But the belief in the authoritativeness of moral obligation may survive the religious source from which it sprang and last after the alliance between morality and religion has been broken. It has been pointed out by Schopenhauer and others60 that Kant’s categorical imperative, with its mysteriousness and awfulness, is really an echo of the old religious formula “Thou shalt,” though it is heard, not as the command of an external legislator, but as a voice coming from within. Schiller wrote to Goethe, “There still remains something 56in Kant, as in Luther, that makes one think of a monk who has left his monastery, but been unable to efface all traces of it.”61

58 Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, ii. 212.

59 T. Bohlin, Das Grundproblem der Ethik (Uppsala & Leipzig, 1923), p. 428 sqq.

60 A. Schopenhauer, Die Grundlage der Moral, §§ 4, 6 (Sämmtliche Werke, iv.2 [Leipzig, 1916], pp. 124-126, 133 sqq.). F. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant (Stuttgart, 1899), p. 345 sq. J. Rehmke, Grundlegung der Ethik als Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1925), p. 58. Cf. Kant, Von der Einwohnung des bösen Princips neben dem guten, Anmerkung (vi. 23 n. â€; Abbott, p. 330 n. 1), where he speaks of the majesty of the law “like that on Sinai.”

61 Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe in den Jahren 1794 bis 1805, ii. (Stuttgart & Augsburg, 1856), p. 167.

The theological argument in favour of the objective validity of moral judgments, which is based on belief in an all-good God who has revealed his will to mankind, contains, of course, an assumption that cannot be scientifically proved. But even if it could be proved, would that justify the conclusion drawn from it? Those who maintain that they in such a revelation possess an absolute moral standard and that, consequently, any mode of conduct which is in accordance with it must be objectively right, may be asked what they mean by an all-good God. If God were not supposed to be all-good, we might certainly be induced by prudence to obey his decrees, but they could not lay claim to moral validity; suppose the devil were to take over the government of the world, what influence would that have on the moral values—would it make the right wrong and the wrong right? It is only the all-goodness of God that can give his commandments absolute moral validity. But to say that something is good because it is in accordance with the will of an all-good God is to reason in a circle; if goodness means anything, it must have a meaning which is independent of his will. God is called good or righteous because he is supposed to possess certain qualities that we are used to call so: he is benevolent, he rewards virtue and punishes vice, and so forth. For such reasons we add the attributes goodness and righteousness to his other attributes, which express qualities of an objective character, and by calling him all-good we attribute to him perfect goodness.62 As a matter of 57fact, there are also many theologians who consider moral distinctions to be antecedent to the divine commands. Thomas Aquinas and his school maintain that the right is not right because God wills it, but that God wills it because it is right.

62 Cf. Shaftesbury, op. cit., ii. 49 sq.: “Whoever thinks there is a God, and pretends formally to believe that he is just and good, must suppose that there is independently such a thing as justice and injustice, truth and falsehood, right and wrong; according to which he pronounces that God is just, righteous, and true.” A similar remark has been made by C. Stumpf (Vom ethischen Skeptizismus [Leipzig, 1909], p. 22) and G. Heymans (Einführung in die Ethik auf Grundlage der Erfahrung [Leipzig, 1914], p. 8).

Before leaving this subject I must still mention a fact that has made moralists so anxious to prove the objectivity of our moral judgments, namely, the belief that ethical subjectivism is an extremely dangerous doctrine. In a little book called Is Conscience an Emotion?, largely written to oppose views held either by Professor McDougall or myself, Dr. Rashdall remarks that “the scientific spirit does not require us to blind ourselves to the practical consequences which hang upon the solution of not a few scientific problems,” and that “assuredly there is no scientific problem upon which so much depends as upon the answer we give to the question whether the distinction which we are accustomed to draw between right and wrong belongs to the region of objective truth like the laws of mathematics and of physical science, or whether it is based upon an actual emotional constitution of individual human beings.”63 He maintains that the emotionalist theory of ethics, which leads to a denial of the objective validity of moral judgments, “is fatal to the deepest spiritual convictions and to the highest spiritual aspirations of the human race,” and that it therefore is “a matter of great practical as well as intellectual importance” that it should be rejected. “To deny the validity of the idea 58of duty,” he says, “has a strong tendency to impair its practical influence on the individual’s life”; and “the belief in the objectivity of our moral judgments is a necessary premiss for any valid argument for the belief either in God, if by that be understood a morally good or perfect Being, or in Immortality.”64 The last statement is astounding. In another place Dean Rashdall argues that objective morality presupposes the belief in God,65 and now we are told that any valid argument for the belief in God presupposes objective morality. These two statements combined lead to the logical conclusion that there is no valid evidence either for the existence of God or for the objectivity of moral judgments.

63 Rashdall, Is Conscience an Emotion?, p. 199 sq.

64 Rashdall, op. cit., pp. 126, 127, 194.

65 Supra, p. 55.

It is needless to say that a scientific theory is not invalidated by the mere fact that it is likely to cause mischief. The unfortunate circumstance that there do exist dangerous things in the world, proves that something may be dangerous and yet true. Another question is whether the ethical subjectivism I am here advocating really is a danger to morality. It cannot be depreciated by the same inference as was drawn from the teaching of the ancient Sophists, namely, that if that which appears to each man as right or good stands for that which is right or good, then everybody has the natural right to follow his caprice and inclinations and to hinder him doing so is an infringement on his rights. My moral judgments spring from my own moral consciousness; they judge of the conduct of other men not from their point of view but from mine, not in accordance with their feelings and opinions about right and wrong but according to my own. And these are not arbitrary. We approve and disapprove because we cannot do otherwise; our moral consciousness belongs to our mental constitution, which we cannot 59change as we please. Can we help feeling pain when the fire burns us? Can we help sympathizing with our friends? Are these facts less necessary or less powerful in their consequences, because they fall within the subjective sphere of our experience? So also, why should the moral law command less obedience because it forms a part of ourselves?

I think that ethical writers are often inclined to overrate the influence of moral theory upon moral practice, but if there is any such influence at all, it seems to me that ethical subjectivism, instead of being a danger, is more likely to be an advantage to morality. Could it be brought home to people that there is no absolute standard in morality, they would perhaps be on the one hand more tolerant and on the other hand more critical in their judgments. Emotions depend on cognitions and are apt to vary according as the cognitions vary; hence a theory which leads to an examination of the psychological and historical origin of people’s moral opinions should be more useful than a theory which postulates moral truths enunciated by self-evident intuitions that are unchangeable. In every society the traditional notions as to what is good or bad, obligatory or indifferent, are commonly accepted by the majority of people without further reflection. By tracing them to their source it will be found that not a few of these notions have their origin in ignorance and superstition or in sentimental likes or dislikes, to which a scrutinizing judge can attach little importance;66 and, on the other hand, he must condemn many an act or omission which public opinion, out of thoughtlessness, treats with indifference. It will, moreover, appear that moral estimates often survive the causes from which they sprang. 60And what unprejudiced person can help changing his views if he be persuaded that they have no foundation in existing facts?

66 See infra, pp. 107, 108, 258.

I have thus arrived at the conclusion that neither the attempts of moral philosophers or theologians to prove the objective validity of moral judgments, nor the common sense assumption to the same effect, give us any right at all to accept such a validity as a fact. So far, however, I have only tried to show that it has not been proved; now I am prepared to take a step further and assert that it cannot exist. The reason for this is that in my opinion the predicates of all moral judgments, all moral concepts, are ultimately based on emotions, and that, as is very commonly admitted,67 no objectivity can come from an emotion. It is of course true or not that we in a given moment have a certain emotion; but in no other sense can the antithesis of true and false be applied to it. The belief that gives rise to an emotion, the cognitive basis of it, is either true or false; in the latter case the emotion may be said to be felt “by mistake”—as when a person is frightened by some object in the dark which he takes for a ghost, or is indignant with a person to whom he imputes a wrong that has been committed by somebody else; but this does not alter the nature of the emotion itself. We may call the emotion of another individual 61“unjustified,” if we feel that we ourselves should not have experienced the same emotion had we been in his place, or, as in the case of moral approval or disapproval, if we cannot share his emotion. But to speak, as Brentano does,68 of “right” and “wrong” emotions, springing from self-evident intuitions and having the same validity as truth and error, is only another futile attempt to objectivize our moral judgments. Heymans regards it as self-evident that a good man deserves to be happy and a bad man unhappy;69 but what is this “axiom” if not a mere expression of the retributive character of the moral emotions? So also other instances of the so-called Gefühlsevidenz are nothing but psychological facts put into propositions.70

67 See, e.g., Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, i. 145 sq., ii. 195; Idem, Is Conscience an Emotion?, pp. 30, 36; Sorley, op. cit., p. 54; C. Hebler, Philosophische Aufsätze (Leipzig, 1869), p. 48; J. Watson, Hedonistic Theories from Aristippus to Spencer (Glasgow, 1895), p. 135; H. Maier, Psychologie des emotionalen Denkens (Tübingen, 1908), pp. 789, 790, 800; H. Münsterberg, Philosophie der Werte (Leipzig, 1908), p. 28; H. Höffding, Etik (Köbenhavn & Kristiania, 1913), p. 51; L. T. Hobhouse, The Rational Good (London, 1921), p. 16; R. Müller-Freienfels, Irrationalismus (Leipzig, 1922), p. 226; Idem, Metaphysik des Irrationalen (Leipzig, 1927), p. 400; J. Laird, The Idea of Value (Cambridge, 1929), pp. 247, 315.

68 F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (Leipzig, 1921), p. 18 sqq.

69 Heymans, op. cit., p. 203.

70 Cf. infra, p. 263.

If there are no moral truths it cannot be the object of a science of ethics to lay down rules for human conduct, since the aim of all science is the discovery of some truth. Professor Höffding argues that the subjectivity of our moral valuations does not prevent ethics from being a science any more than the subjectivity of our sensations renders a science of physics impossible, because both are concerned with finding the external facts that correspond to the subjective processes.71 It may, of course, be a subject for scientific inquiry to investigate the means which are conducive to human happiness or welfare, and the results of such a study may also be usefully applied by moralists, but it forms no more a part of ethics than physics is a part of psychology. If the word “ethics” is to be used as the name for a science, the object of that science can only be to study the moral consciousness as a fact.

71 Höffding, op. cit., p. 68.

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