The Miscellaneous Works of ... Sir James Mackintosh, etc

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- KB L I ' i TUE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 1851.

ADVERTISEMENT.

BT THE EDITOR. [Prefixed to tub Edition of Three Volumes, published in 1846.] These Volumes contain whatever (with the exception of his History of England) is believed to be of the most value in the writings of Sir James Mackintosh. Something of method, it will be observed, has been affected in their arrangement by commencing with what is more purely Philosophical, and proceeding through Literature to Politics ; each of those heads being generally, though not quite precisely, referable to each volume respectively. The Dissertation on Ethical Science, which was originally published in the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britan nica, is included in this collection by virtue of an arrangement with the proprietors of that work. With such selection would naturally have terminated his responsibility ; but in committing again to the press matter originally, for the most part, hastily printed, the Editor has assumed — as the lesser of two evils — a larger exercise of discretion in the revision of the text than he could have wished to have felt had been imposed upon him.

Introduction

. The inadequacy of the words of ordinary language for the purposes of Philosophy, i3 an ancient and frequent complaint ; of which the justness will be felt by all who consider the state to which seme of the most important arts would be reduced, if the coarse tool . of the common labourer were the only instruments to be employed in the most delicate operations of manual expertness. The watchmaker, the optician, and the surgeon, are provided with instruments which are fitted, by careful ingenuity, to second their skill; the philosopher alone is doomed to use the rudest tools for the most refined purposes. He must reason in words of which the looseness and vagueness are suitable, and even agreeable, in the usual intercourse of life, but which are almost as remote from the extreme exactness and precision required, not only in the conveyance, but in Tlie natural philosopher and mathema tician have in some degree the privilege of framing their own terms of art ; though that liberty is daily narrowed by the happy diffu sion of these gtjeat branches of knowledge, which daily mixes their language with the E readers when he most needs their calm at tention and the undisturbed exercise of their impartial judgment.

There is scarcely a neutral term left in Ethics ; so quickly arc such expressions enlisted on the side of Praise or Blame, by the address of con tending passions. A true philosopher must not even desire that men should less love Virtue, or hate Vice, in order to fit them for a more unprejudiced judgment on his speculations. general vocabulary of educated men. The cultivator of mental and moral philosophy can seldom do more than mend the faults of his words by definition ; — a necessary, but very inadequate expedient, and one in a great measure defeated in practice by the unavoidably more frequent recurrence of the terms in their vague, than in their de finite acceptation. The mind, to which such definition is faintly, and but occasionally, present, naturally suffers, in the ordinary state of attention, the scientific meaning to disappear from remembrance, and insensibly ascribes to the word a great part, if not the whole, of that popular sense which is so very much more familiar even to the most veteran speculator.

The obstacles which stood in the way of Lucretius and Cicero, when they began to translate the subtile philosophy of Greece into their narrow and barren tongue, are always felt by the philosopher when he struggles to express, with the necessary dis crimination, his abstruse reasonings in words which, though those of his own language, he must take from the mouths of those to whom his distinctions would be without meaning. The moral philosopher is in this respect subject to peculiar difficulties. His state ments and reasonings often call for nicer discriminations of language than those which are necessary in describing or discussing the purely intellectual part of human nature ; but his freedom in the choice of words is more circumscribed. As he treats of mat ters on which all men are disposed to form a judgment, he can as rarely hazard glaring innovations in diction, — at least in an adult and mature language like ours, — as the orator or the poet.

If he deviates from common use, There are, perhaps, not many occasions where the penury and laxity of language are more felt than in entering on the history of sciences where the first measure must be to mark out the boundary of the whole sub ject with some distinctness. But no exact ness in these important operations can be approached without a new division of human knowledge, adapted to the present stage of its progress, and a reformation of all those barbarous, pedantic, unmeaning, and (what is worse) wrongmeaning names which con tinue to be applied to the greater part of its branches. Instances are needless where nearly all the appellations are faulty. The term " Metaphysics " affords a specimen of all the faults which the name of a science can combine. To those who know only their own language, it must, at their en trance on the study, convey no meaning : it points their attention to nothing.

If they examine the language in which its parts are significant, they will be misled into the per nicious error of believing that it seeks something more than the interpretation of nature. It is only by examining the history of ancient philosophy that the probable origin of this name will be found, in its application, as the running title of several essays of Aristotle, placed in a collection of the manuscripts of that great philosopher, after his treatise on Physics. It has the greater fault of an unsteady and fluctuating signification; — denoting one class of objects in the seventeenth century, and another in the eighteenth; — even in the nineteenth not quite of the same import in the mouth of a German, as in that of a French or English philosopher ; to say nothing of the he must atone for his deviation by hiding it, and can only give a new sense to an old word by so skilful a position of it as to render the new meaning so quickly under stood that its novelty is scarcely perceived.

Add to this, that in those most difficult inquiries for which the utmost coolness is not more than sufficient, he is often forced to use terms commonly connected with warm feeling, with high praise, with severe re proach ; — which excite the passions of his farther objection that it continues to be a badge of undue pretension among some of the followers of the science, while it has become a name of reproach and derision among those who altogether decry it. The modern name of the very modern science called " Political Economy," though deli berately bestowed on it by its most eminent teachers, is perhaps a still more notable sample of the like faults. It might lead the ignorant to confine it to retrenchment in national expenditure ; and a consideration of its etymology alone would lead us into the more mischievous error of believing it to teach, that national wealth is best pro moted by the contrivance and interference of lawgivers, in opposition to its surest doc trine, and the one which it most justly boasts of having discovered and enforced. in its conception, but in its adoption and usefulness.

In the Continental languao'es to the south of the Rhine, the practice of deriving the names of science from the Greek must be continued; which would render the new names for a while unintelli gible to the majority of men. Even if suc cessful in Germany, where a flexible and fertile language affords unbounded liberty of derivation and composition from native roots or elements, and where the newly de rived and compounded words would thus be as clear to the mind, and almost as little startling to the ear of every man, as the oldest terms in the language, yet the whole nomenclature would be unintelligible to other nations. But, the intercommunity of the technical terms of science in Europe having been so far broken down by the Germans, the influence of their literature and philosophy is so rapidly increasing in the greater part of the Continent, that though a revolution in scientific nomen clature be probably yet far distant, the foundation of it may be considered as already prepared.

It is easy to conceive an exhaustive analysis of human knowledge, and a consequent division of it into parts corresponding to all the classes of objects to which it relates : — a representation of that vast edifice, con taining a picture of what is finished, a sketch of what is building, and even a conjectural outline of what, though required by com pleteness and convenience, as well as sym metry, is yet altogether untouched. A system of names might also be imagined derived from a few roots, indicating the objects of each part, and showing the relation of the parts to each other. An order and a language somewhat resembling those by which the objects of the sciences of Botany and Chemistry have, in the eighteenth century, been arranged and denoted, are doubtless capable of application to the sciences generally, when considered as parts of the system of knowledge.

The attempts, however, which have hitherto been made to accomplish that analytical division of knowledge which must necessarily precede a new nomenclature of the sciences, have required so prodigious a superiority of genius in the single instance of approach to success by Bacon, as to dis courage rivalship nearly as much as the frequent examples of failure in subsequent times could do. The nomenclature itself is attended with great difficulties, not indeed Although so great an undertaking must be reserved for a second Bacon and a future generation, it is necessary for the historian of any branch of knowledge to introduce his work by some account of the limits and con tents of the sciences of which he is about to trace the progress ; and though it will be found impossible to trace throughout this treatise a distinct line of demarcation, yet a general and imperfect sketch of the boundaries of the whole, and of the parts of out present subject, may be a considerable help to the reader, as it has been a useful guide to the writer.

There is no distribution of the parts of knowledge more ancient than that of them into the physical and moral sciences, which seems liable to no other objection than that it does not exhaust the subject. Even this division, however, cannot be safely employed without warning the reader that no science is entirely insulated, and that the principles of one are often only the conclusions and results of another. Every branch of know- B cant words, as to affirm that " ought," " right," " duty," " virtue," are sounds with out "meaning. It would be fatal to an ethi cal theory that it did not explain them, and that it did not comprehend all the conceptions and emotions which they call up. There never yet was a theory which did not attempt such an explanation. ledge has its root in the theory of the under standing, from which even the mathematician must learn what can be known of his magni tude and his numbers ; moral science is founded on that other, — hitherto unnamed, — part of the philosophy of human nature (to be constantly and vigilantly distinguished from intellectual philosophy), which contem plates the laws of sensibility, of emotion, of desire and aversion, of pleasure and pain, of happiness and misery ; and on which arise the august and sacred landmarks that stand conspicuous along the frontier between Right and Wrong.

Section I. Preliminary Observations

Therj; is no man who, in a case where he was a calm bystander, would not look with more satisfaction on acts of kindness than on acts of cruelty. No man, after the first ex citement of his mind has subsided, ever whispered to himself with self-approbation and secret joy that he had been guilty of cruelty or baseness. Every criminal is strongly impelled to hide these qualities of his actions from himself, as he would do from others, by clothing his conduct in some disguise of duty, or of necessity. There is no tribe so rude as to be without a faint perception of a difference between Right and Wrong. There is no subject on which men of all ages and nations coincide in so many points as in the general rides of con duct, and in the qualities of the human cha racter which deserve esteem. Even the grossest deviations from the general consent will appear, on close examination, to be not so much corruptions of moral feeling, as ignorance of facts ; or errors with respect to the consequences of action ; or cases in which the dissentient party is inconsistent with other parts of his own principles, which destroys the value of his dissent ; or where each dissident is condemned by all the other dissidents, which immeasurably augments the majority against him.

In the first three cases he may be convinced by argument that his moral judgment should be changed on principles which he recognises as just; and he can seldom, if ever, be condemned at the same time by the body of mankind who agree in their moral systems, and by those But however multiplied the connections of the moral and physical sciences are, it is not difficult to draw a general distinction between them. The purpose of the physical sciences throughout all their provinces, is to answer the question What is . They con sist only of facts arranged according to their likeness, and expressed by general names given to every class of similar facts. The purpose of the moral sciences is to answer the question What ought to be ? They aim at ascertaining the rules which ought to govern voluntary action, and to which those habitual dispositions of mind which are the source of voluntary actions ought to be adapted.

It is obvious that " will," " action," "habit," " disposition," are terms denoting facts in human nature, and that an explana tion of them must be sought in mental philosophy, which, if knowledge be divided into physical and moral, must be placed among physical sciences, though it essentially differs from them all in having for its chief object those laws of thought which alone render any other sort of knowledge possible. But it is equally certain that the word " ought " introduces the mind into a new region, to which nothing physical corresponds. However philosophers may deal with this most important of words, it is in stantly understood by all who do not attempt to define it. No civilised speech, perhaps no human language, is without correspondent terms. It would be as reasonable to deny that "space" and "greenness" are signifiwho on some other points dissent from that general code, without being also convicted of error by inconsistency with himself.

The tribes who expose new-born infants, con demn those who abandon their decrepit parents to destruction : those who betray and murder strangers, are condemned by the rules of faith and humanity which they acknowledge in their intercourse with their countrymen. Mr. Hume, in a dialogue in which he ingeniously magnifies the moral heresies of two nations so polished as the Athenians and the French, has very satisfactorily resolved his own difficulties : — " In how many circumstances would an Athenian and a Frenchman of merit certainly resemble each other : — Humanity, fidelity, truth, justice, courage, temperance, constancy, dignity of mind." " The principles upon which men reason in Morals are always the same, though the conclusions which they draw are often very different." * He might have added, that almost every deviation which he imputes to each nation is at variance with some of the virtues justly esteemed by both, and that the re ciprocal condemnation of each other's errors which appears in his statement entitles us, on these points, to strike out the suffrages of both when collecting the general judg ment of mankind.

If we bear in mind that the question relates to the coincidence of all men in considering the same qualities as virtues, and not to the preference of one class of virtues by some, and of a different class by others, the exceptions from the agreement of mankind, in their system of practical morality, will be reduced to absolute insignificance ; and we shall learn to view them as no more affecting the harmony of our moral faculties, than the resemblance of our limbs and features is affected by monstrous conformations, or by the unfor tunate effects of accident and disease in a very few individuals. f It is very remarkable, however, that though all men agree that there are acts which ought to be done, and acts which ought not to be done ; though the far greater part of mankind agree in their list of virtues and duties, of vices and crimes ; and though the whole race, as it advances in other im provements, is as evidently tending towards tlie moral system ofthe most civilised nations, as children in their growth tend to the opinions, as much as to the experience and strength, of adults ; yet there are no questions in the circle of inquiry to which answers more various have been given than — How men have thus come to agree in the " Rule of Life ."

Whence arises their general reverence for it ? and What is meant by affirming that it ought to be inviolably observed ? It is singular, that where we are most nearly agreed respecting rules, we should, perhaps, most widely differ as to the causes of our agreement, and as to the reasons which justify us for adhering to it. The discussion of these subjects composes what is usually called the " Theory of Morals " in a sense not in all respects co incident with what is usually considered as theory in other sciences. When we investi gate the causes of our moral agreement, the term " theory" retains its ordinary scientific sense ; but when we endeavour to ascertain the reasons of it, we rather employ the term partie du genre humain leur rend temoignage. Les Orientaux, et les Grecs, et les Iiomains conviennent en cela ; et il faudroit etre aussi abruti que les sau vages Ame'ricains pour approuver leurs coutumes, pleines d'une cruaute qui passe meme celle des betes.

Cependant ces memes sauvages sentent bicn ce que e'es. que la justice en d'autres occasions ; et quoi que il n'y ait point de mauvaise pratique peut-ctre qui ne soit autorise'e quelque part, il y en a peu pourtant qui ne soient condamnt'es le plus souvent, et par la plus grande partie des hommes." — Leib nitz, Œuvres Philosophiques (Amst. et Leipz. 17C5, 4to.), p. 49. There are some admirable observations on this subject in Hartley, especially in the deve lopment of the 49th Proposition: — " The rule of life drawn from the practice and opinions of man kind coiTccts and improves itself perpetually, till at last it determines entirely for virtue, and ex cludes all kinds and degrees of vice." — Observations on Man, vol. ii. p. 214. * Philosophical Works (Edinh. 1826), vol. iv. pp. 420. 422. X " On convient le plus souvent de ces instincts de la conscience.

La plus grande et la plus saine AVORKS. 6 sent age, and therefore probably now familiar to most readers of this Dissertation. as importing the theory of the rules of an art. In the first case, " theory " denotes, as usual, the most general laws to which certain facts can be reduced; whereas in the second, it points out the efficacy of the ob servance, in practice, of certain rules, for producing the effects intended to be pro duced in the art. These reasons also may be reduced under the general sense by stating the question relating to them thus : — What are the causes why the observance of certain rules enables us to execute certain purposes ? An account of the various answers attempted to be made to these in quiries, properly forms the history of Ethics. The attentive reader may already per ceive, that these momentous inquiries relate to at least two perfectly distinct subjects : — 1.

The nature of the distinction between Right and Wrong in human conduct, and 2. The nature of those feelings with which Right and Wrong are contemplated by human beings. The latter constitutes what has been called the " Theory of Moral Sentiments ; " the former consists in an investigation into the criterion of Morality in action. Other most important questions arise in this pro vince : but the two problems which have been just stated, and the essential distinc tion between them, must be clearly appre hended by all who are desirous of under standing the controversies which have prevailed on ethical subjects. The dis crimination has seldom been made by moral philosophers'; the difference between the two problems has never been uniformly observed by any of them ; and it will appear, in the sequel, that they have been not rarely altogether confounded by very eminent men, to the destructiofi of all just conception and of all correct reasoning in this most im portant, and, perhaps, most difficult, of sciences.

Dr. Paley represents the principle of a Moral Sense as being opposed to that of Utility.* Now, it is evident that this re presentation is founded on a confusion of the two questions which have been stated above. That we are endued with a Moral Sense, or, in other words, a faculty which immediately approves what is right, and condemns what is wrong, is only a statement of the feelings with which we contemplate actions. But to affirm that right actions are those which conduce to the well-being of mankind, is a proposition concerning the outward effects by which right actions them selves may be recognised. As these affirm ations relate to different subjects, they can not be opposed to each other, any more than the solidity of earth is inconsistent with the fluidity of water ; and a very little reflection will show it to be easily conceivable that they may be both true.

Man may be so con stituted as instantaneously to approve cer tain actions without any reference to their consequences ; and yet Reason may never theless discover, that a tendency to produce general happiness is the essential characteristic of such actions. Mr. Bentham also contrasts the principle of Utility with that of Sympathy, of which he considers the Moral Sense as being one of the forms.')" It is needless to repeat, that propositions which affirm, or deny, anything of different sub jects, cannot contradict each other. As these celebrated persons have thus inferred or implied the non-existence of a Moral Sense, from their opinion that the morality of actions depends upon their usefulness, so other philosophers of equal name have con cluded that the utility of actions cannot be the criterion of their morality, because a perception of that utility appears to them to form a faint and inconsiderable part of our Moral Sentiments, — if, indeed, it be at It may therefore be allowable to deviate so far from historical order, as to illustrate the nature, and to prove the importance, of the distinction, by an example of the effects of neglecting it, taken from the recent works of justly celebrated writers ; in which they discuss questions much agitated in the pre- * Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy.

Compare book i. chap. v. with book ii. chap. vi. t Introduction to the Principles of Morality and Legislation, chap. all discoverable in them.* These errors are the more remarkable, because the like con fusion of perceptions with their objects, of emotions with their causes, or even the omis sion to mark the distinctions, would in every other subject be felt to be a most serious fault in philosophising. If, for instance, an element were discovered to be common to all bodies which our taste perceives to be sweet, and to be found in no other bodies, it is apparent that this discovery, perhaps im portant in other respects, would neither affect our perception of sweetness, nor the pleasure which attends it : Both would con tinue to be what they have been since the existence of mankind. Every proposition concerning that element would relate to sweet bodies, and belong to the science of Chemistry ; while every proposition respect ing the perception or pleasure of sweetness would relate either to the body or mind of man, and accordingly belong either to the science of Physiology, or to that of mental philosophy.

During the many ages which passed before the analysis of the sun's beams had proved them to be compounded of different colours, white objects were seen, and their whiteness was sometimes felt to be beautiful, in the very same manner as since that discovery. The qualities of light are the object of Optics ; the nature of beauty can be ascertained only by each man's observation of his own mind ; the changes in the living frame which succeed the refrac tion of light in the eye, and precede mental operation, will, if they are ever to be known by man, constitute a part of Physiology. But no proposition relating to one of these orders of phenomena can contradict or sup port a proposition concerning another order. The analogy of this latter case will justify another preliminary observation. In the case of the pleasure derived from beauty, the question whether that pleasure be original, or derived, is of secondary importance.

It has been often observed that the same pro perties which are admired as beautiful in the horse, contribute also to his safety and speed ; and they who infer that the admiration of beauty was originally founded on the con venience of fleetness and firmness, if they at the same time hold that the idea of use fulness is gradually effaced, and that the admiration of a certain shape at length rises instantaneously without reference to any purpose, may, with perfect consistency, regard a sense of beauty as an independent and universal principle of human nature. The laws of such a feeling of beauty are discoverable only by self-observation : those ofthe qualities which call it forth are ascertained by examination ofthe outward things which are called beautiful. But it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind, that he who contemplates the beautiful proportions of a horse, as the signs and proofs of se curity or quickness, and has in view these convenient qualities, is properly said to prefer the horse for his usefulness, not for his beauty ; though he may choose him from the same outward appearance which pleases the admirer of the beautiful animal.

He alone who derives immediate pleasure from the appearance itself, without reflection on any advantages which it may promise, is truly said to feel the beauty. The distinction, however, manifestly depends, not on the origin of the emotion, but on its object and nature when completely formed. Many of our most important perceptions through the eye are universally acknowledged to be ac quired : but they are as general as the ori ginal perceptions of that organ ; they arise as independently of our will, and human nature would be quite as imperfect without them. The case of an adult who did not immediately see the different distances of objects from his eye, would be thought by every one to be as great a deviation from the ordinary state of man, as if he were incapable of distinguishing the brightest sunshine from the darkest midnight.

Acquired perceptions and sentiments may therefore be termed natural, as much as those which are * Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, part iv. Even Hume, in the third book of his Treatise of Human Nature, the most precise, perhaps, of his philosophical writings, uses the following as the title of one of the sections : " Moral Distinctions, derived from a Moral Sense." animous in their practical opinions, little need was felt of exact theory. The teachers of Morals were content with partial or se condary principles, — with the combination of principles not always reconcilable, — even with vague but specious phrases which in any degree explained or seemed to ex plain the Rules of the Art of Life, appear in77, as these last did, at once too evident to need investigation, and too venerable to be approached by controversy. more commonly so called, if they be as rarely found wanting.

Ethical theories can never be satisfactorily discussed by those who do not constantly bear in mind, that the question concerning the existence of a moral faculty in man which immediately approves or disapproves without reference to any far ther object, is perfectly distinct, on the one hand, from that which inquires into the qualities of actions, thus approved or disap proved ; and on the other, from an inquiry whether that faculty be derived from other parts of our mental frame, or be itself one of the ultimate constituent principles of human nature. Perhaps the subtile genius of Greece was in part withheld from indulging itself in ethical controversy by the influence of So crates, who was much more a teacher of virtue than even a searcher after Truth —