Lectures on ethics

Preface

They who have read Dr. Brown's Lectures must at once be sensible, that there is not the same proportional amount of severe and searching analysis in the Ethical part of his course, which they find in the first volume, occupied with his investigations and views on the Mental Philosophy. This is partly due to the nature of the subject. Not that there is not room in this department for the exercise of a most profound and subtle discrimination, both in making good a just description of the mental processes and phenomena which have to do with our states of moral judgment and moral feeling, and in assigning the objective principles of the science. But over and above the strict philosophy of the subject, there is in it a high practical importance, possessing in itself the most urgent claims on the attention of the Professor; and making it indeed an imperative duty that he should pass onward from the laws, whether of human emotion or

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thought, to the lessons and the obligations of human virtue. There was, besides, a great temptation — were it for nothing else than the relief and relaxation of his students, after the fatigue of those arduous speculations through which he had before conducted them — that he should regale both himself and them, by setting forth in perspective the grace and loveliness of those virtues the principle of which he had just been labouring to explore. Let us not wonder, then, that the philosophical savant should, on such occasions, have become the rhetorician or the monitor ; and. indeed, we should have held it an unpardonable defect, had he not felt the impulse to communicate of his own enthusiasm for the beautiful and the good to the youth who sat before him. They who personally knew him will at once recognise, in some of the representations which are here given, a picture of that very gentleness and refinement by which himself was characterized. It is this mixture of the more popular and engaging with things of abstruser quality w T hi eh, in our opinion, makes it so advisable that these Lectures should be given to the world in the form of a separate publication.

But it may well and rightly be asked, Does the volume now 7 given of Brown's Ethical Lectures, does it present us either with a perfect theory of virtue and of man's moral constitution on the one hand, or with a perfect directory of moral conduct upon the other ? Our brief and general reply to this question is, that, in cur opinion, such a work still is, and may long

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vii remain, a desideratum. — not in the literature of England only, but in the literature of the world. But we ask in turn, What would have become of any of the sciences, all of which are progressive, if no work had been valued or recommended till the science had reached, (what none of the sciences has yet done, and perhaps never will in our present state,) — had reached its point of greatest possible advancement, and a treatise could have been written upon it in a style altogether worthy of the then attained optimism ? There is many a book which has failed, and must necessarily fail, in giving the full and perfect exposition of a subject ; and which yet deserves a high, and it may even be for a time the highest place, in the literature of the subject. It is upon the strength of each successive work, as by the footsteps of an ascending ladder, that all science is carried upward to higher and higher elevations, — keeping its ground perhaps for a generation or two, and yet not superseding its predecessors, so as that they shall altogether vanish for some aires at least from the sight and remembrance of the literary public. Such has been the history of learning from the beginning of the world ; and hence the danger of coming forth with a eulogy on a work which might be altogether preposterous, if given without respect, to the future enlargements, or even the future corrections, that may be awaiting its doctrines and its views. It is true that a Professor in a college is in the best and likeliest circumstances for the preparation of a treatise on the subject of his own chair, which viii

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might bid fair, if not to be complete, — for who can assign a limit to any of the sciences ? — at least, as far as it goes, to be invulnerable. By the successive modelling and remodelling, year after year, of the prelections which he delivers, he may bequeath to his successors a specimen of very choice authorship. It is true we read in the Life of Dr. Brown that he added and amended very little upon his course, after the second year of his professorship. But another explanation might be given of this than that he thought his preparations did not admit either of further enlargement or further rectification ; though it must be allowed by all to have been a truly marvellous achievement that so great a work should have been accomplished within so brief a period. My own theory, however, on the matter is, the dislike, which Dr. Brown may have shared in with some other authors, to the business of recasting, or retouching in any way, their older compositions. It seems to me identical with the dislike which many painters feel at making a copy of their own pictures ; and so both the writer and the artist find themselves more congenially employed when engaged with new works and new objects altogether. But whatever cause may be assigned for this peculiarity in the construction of Brown's Lectures, it hinders not that the volume to which we now prefix these sentences may both be entitled to a most respectful attention from every student of moral science, and to a place in many a o-enerai library ; and vet that there might remain

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much to supplement, and some things to modify, ere a work shall be framed which might abide a textbook and a standard work upon Ethical Science to all generations.

With these explanations, we feel ourselves at perfect liberty either to animadvert upon, or to eulogize, the various passages of this w r ork, just as we find occasion. We have been called upon to w r rite a recommendatory preface : But, besides the presumption of such an unnecessary office for a work of such high public estimation, w r e hold it a better introduction to any work, if a heading for it be at all required, that, instead of an unqualified panegyric, it should be more in the character of an honest and impartial review. But the very few pages w r e can afford forbid any formal undertaking of this sort ; and meanwhile — where there is such a body of sound principle so ably and eloquently advocated, and such an immeasurable superiority over all the merely human systems of Moral Philosophy, or those wdiere the science is treated apart from Revelation, which we are acquainted with — we are most unwilling to refuse our testimony, and the more as w r e are permitted to accompany it with such suggestions as w 7 e venture to think might be profitable to the reader. We have only to apologize for the sententious air of the deliverances which follow,— sententious, because wdthin our narrow^ limits, necessarily short, and not because framed in an authoritative or unkind spirit towards one whose writings, w T hen taken in conjunction with those of certain

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others, and more especially of Bishop Butler and Dugald Stewart, might — once that the philosophy of the Christian argument is better understood — prove eminently helpful in propitiating the higher reason of the country, and gaining it over to the sacred cause of Truth and Righteousness.

First, then, we are persuaded, that had he revised these rapidly prepared, and, because gotten up with something like the speed and power of magic, for the exigencies of a class, these wonderful Lectures, — had he revised them into a wary and well-digested treatise, we feel hopeful that not one expression would have escaped from him, which could have at all countenanced the idea that virtue was a thing of mere arbitrary constitution, or at all dependent for its reality and being on the mere organism of man's moral nature. The truth is, that his own Natural Theology, apart from the scripture which tells us that God made man in His own image, leads to a different conclusion. We can certainly imagine a race so constituted as to do homage to a standard and code of morality different from, nay opposite to, our own in all its articles. But then, as Dr. Brown well expresses it, we must have been created by a different Being from Him, who, in constituting us such as w T e are, hath given us an irresistible evidence for the virtues of our estimation having had their residence, as so many eternal verities, in the constitution of the Godhead. The habit of substituting for the objective reality of things the feelings or the perceptions of our own minds, would lead, if

PREFACE, xi carried out, to a universal Pyrrhonism, from which our only refuge is in the belief of a Deity. We can fancy an atheist to limit the reign and the reality of virtue, by looking on it as commensurate only with the species. But he who believes " the universality of virtue to be coextensive with the minds in which its emotions arise," (p. 25,) and further believes that he thus feels because thus fashioned by the hand and #fter the mind of the Deity, must mean a great deal more by the essential distinctions of morality ; and, carrying the speculation upward to the Being in whom these emotions originate, must regard virtue as a thing of stable existence, having its fixed and concrete reality in the divine nature.

But the very principle on which w r e should modify certain expressions of Dr. Brown, in regard to the objective and the subjective of human virtue, is the principle on which we hold him to be so eminently sound in his observations on what he has chosen to designate as the Theological System of Morals. Our only exception, in fact, is to the title which he has affixed to it. The theory which resolves all virtue into the law or will of God, may be termed, or as some, we fear, would feel, may be stigmatized, by having the name fastened on it of the Theological System of Ethics. We can only say that it is not the Ethical System of our best theologians. We are sure that it forms no part of the creed or theology of those whom we hold to be the soundest and ablest thinkers in our science. The primary fountain-head of morality is xii

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placed by them, not in the will of God, but in what is prior to will, and to all jurisprudence, — in the nature of God. Virtue, when impressed on a tablet of jurisprudence, whether regarded as the law of the heart or as the law of a written revelation, they hold to be but a transcript from the anterior tablet of the divine character. It is true that, along with Dr. Brown, they esteem it as the prime duty of man to obey the will of God ; but not because that will is the creator of virtue, which, uncreated as the Deity himself, forms the eternal rectitude of an eternal and all-perfect Being. On this subject, along with the single objection we have made to his nomenclature, we hold Dr. Brown to have argued most ably and successfully ; and can assure his many philosophical admirers that our best and highest theologians think with him — that virtue is right, not because God wills it, but that God wills it because it is right.

And there is another most important coincidence between the ethical views of Dr. Brown and what is conceived by the ablest expounders of Christian truth to be orthodox in theology. We esteem it to be one of his most successful achievements, the utter demolition which he has effected of the Selfish System of Morals; in which category is included the Moral Philosophy of Dr. Paley, as being but an enlargement of the Selfish System — the one, properly so called, making the essence of virtue to lie in the pursuit of our own good in time; and the other, still in the pursuit of our own good, but of our good in eternity.

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The principle which most avails him in the work of refutation is that for which the world w T as first indebted to Bishop Butler, in one of his Fifteen Sermons, which, taken all in all, form a most invaluable repertory of sound ethical doctrine, whether as grounded on the lessons of strictly moral science, or on the admirable and original views presented by their author, of man's moral constitution. The principle to which we now advert is the distinction which Butler so well elucidates, between the object on which our affection rests and terminates, and the accompanying pleasure which is felt in the indulgence of that affection. The object of a virtuous affection is distinct from the pleasure which accompanies its indulgence ; and yet the stronger and more intense that affection, the greater will be the enjoyment that is yielded by its gratification. And so the object of our love to God is God himself, and not the pleasure that we feel in loving Him ; and yet the more intense that love, and so the freer from all taint of selfishness, the greater will be the enjoyment of self; or, in other words, the more disinterested the affection, the greater will be that resulting happiness w T hichi is at once its consequence and its reward. Would that the evangelical system w r ere better understood by academic men — when it w r ould at once be recognised that it stands not more distinguished from the meagre and less peculiar forms w T hich are opposed to it, by the articles of its creed, than by the purer and loftier virtues of its practical directory. The xiv

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distaste for its scriptural and practical technology might at length give way. should it come to be perceived that the true design of the economy which it unfolds is the restoration to man of that godlike character which, in the eye of our best philosophers and our best poets, forms the optimum raarciraum of morality — an elevation never to be attained but through a process which the Bible describes in its own language, when it tells of our being " sanctified by faith,*" and our being " renewed after the image of Him who created us in righteousness and true holiness.'' 1

We strongly recommend to the readers of this volume that they peruse along with it the Sermons of Bishop Butler, as two w T orks, both of which stand alike high in the existent literature of Moral Philosophy, and both peculiarly fitted to be the guides and the accompaniments, and perhaps in some instances the correctives of each other. It will be found in particular that the singularly able and conclusive reasoning of Brown against the System of Utility, derives its utmost degree of strength and illustration from the distinction already referred to, as having been first made by Butler, between the terminating object of any mental tendency or desire, and the pleasure which attends the indulgence of it. He by this single distinction has laid the axe to the root both of the Selfish System in Morals and of the System of Utility ; and in the felicitous analogy which he has pointed out between any of our special

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XV affections, the virtuous affection if we will, and the appetite of hunger — we are made clearly to perceive the principle on which the refutation of both these theories might be made to rest. There is an instant pleasure to self in the exercise of compassion, just as there is an instant pleasure to self in the act of eating; yet the pleasure in neither of these cases is the object in view — that object being in the one case the relief of a fellow-creature in distress, and in the other the relief of hunger. And there is a posterior benefit both to self and to society in all the virtues, as, for example, veracity and justice, just as there is a posterior benefit to the animal economy in the use of food; yet, without either of these benefits being in view, man will eat under the impulse of hunger, and he will act virtuously under the impellent calls of truth, and integrity, and honour. There are other subjects besides on which the reader will attain to a greater satisfaction and sense of fulness, by reading the two authors in conjunction, and thus blending together the lights which are respectively cast on their common argument : first, by the sagacity of Butler, and then by the ingenuity along with the fine flowing illustrative eloquence and the inimitable touches of grace and delicacy which are strewn over the field of his inquiries by Dr. Thomas Brown. But. in his masterly exposure of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, the latter of those two great metaphysicians and moralists whom we have now been comparing together, necessarily stands alone ; and we gladly xvi

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refer to this chapter of his work, as one of the happiest specimens of his great argumentative and analytic powers.

But there is one other occasion on which Butler must be called in as an indispensable auxiliary, to rectify and supplement what we cannot help regarding as a serious deficiency in the speculations of Dr. Brown, who has not once adverted to the greatest discovery, and in itself the most important and precious truth within the whole compass of ethical science ; we mean the famous doctrine which, though felt in all ages and by every possessor of a moral nature, was first announced to the world bv the illustrious English prelate, under the title of the Supremacy of Conscience. The doctrine itself cannot be got rid of by any exceptions which might be taken to this title, or even though Dr. Brown should have succeeded in his condemnation of the name ; for he will never be able to rid us of the notion of a moral sense. But the truth is that we like his conception, and hold it to be a felicitous one, by which, instead of viewing the mind as we should an organic structure, made up of various faculties and parts, he looks on the mind as one and indivisible, but with the susceptibility, at the same time, of passing into various states ; so that it is the whole mind which at one time wills, and at another time remembers, and at another time judges, and at another feels a moral recoil from one sort of deed or character and a lively moral approbation of another. We do not quarrel with that mode of

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xvii apprehending the matter, according to which all these are viewed as distinct states rather than as distinct faculties of the mind — though, for the convenience of language and its needful abbreviation, there must for each class of like phenomena be devised one summary expression, that might be comprehensive of them all ; and so we have had recourse to the general w T ords of will, and memory, and judgment : nor can we very well see why the class of our moral phenomena and feelings should not have the advantage of some such generical term, too, and the moral sense should not continue to be employed as the brief and comprehensive designation of them. For ourselves, we no more object to the language which tells of a moral sense than w r e should object to the language which tells of a moral nature ; nor do we feel that we any more violate the simplicity of the mind in the employment of such language, than we violate the simplicity of any material substance, as lead, w r hen we speak of its fusibility, or any other of the properties which belong to it. On the application of a certain heat to this metal, it passes into a state of fluidity ; just as in the contemplation of certain acts, be they good or evil, the mind passes into the state of moral feeling. Nor do w r e perceive any violence done to the philosophy of either subject when w r e speak of fusibility as a property or power in the one case, or of the conscience and moral sense as being one of the powers or properties of mind in the other. But, be this as it may, the glorious doctrine, or as it may be termed the xviii

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glorious discovery of Bishop Butler, can no more be got rid of by Dr. Brown's proposed reform in the nomenclature of the science, than by the hypothesis of Sir James Mackintosh respecting the generation of the human conscience. Let the phenomena and feelings of our moral nature be reduced to whatever term of phraseology, or to whatever process of formation they may, the doctrine of Butler can in no w T ay be got rid of but by an inadequate and therefore untrue description of the phenomena themselves. It is enough that in every instance of a moral wrong, there is along with the recoil of an offended moral sensibility, the plaint and remonstrance of a felt invasion on a rightful sovereignty — the sovereignty of what may not in fact, but what ought injustice, to be a ruling principle of the mind. The supremacy of conscience is but a compendious expression for the thousands and thousands of such phenomena, of constant and every day occurrence wherever humanity is to be found. It may not be at all times, nay it may seldom in our degenerate race, be the sovereign de facto ; but it is recognised and done universal homage to, as the sovereign de jure — the homage, we mean, of a felt conviction, though not of an actual obedience. The loyalty to virtue may be universally fallen from, and yet it be universally felt that the loyalty is due. Now, in the descriptions of Dr. Brown, the moral emotion seems as if bereft of this capital and most important peculiarity, and spoken of only as one of the many forces which come into play within the

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xix human constitution — there to meet with other forces which, according to the relative degree of their prevalence and power, may or may not have the superiority over it. That they often have the actual superiority is the melancholy experience of all history : but the rightful superiority of the moral element always remains with it, having the suffrages and the sentiments of all men in its favour — its place in the mechanism of our spirits being that of a regulator in a watch, making it clear, even amid the aberrations and disturbances of a machinery which had gone into disorder, that as the time-piece was made to move regularly, so man was made to move virtuously. We have no space for the further illustrations which might be given of this subject ; but would earnestly advise the reader of this volume to supplement the deficiency of which we complain, by a careful perusal and study of Bishop Butler's Sermons upon Human Nature.

His treatment of the elementary questions in morals, forms the most philosophical part of this volume. When he passes from these to the description and detail of the particular virtues, he very much drops the analyst ; and, instead of a laborious and severe scrutiny into first principles, sets before his readers the most beautiful sketches and representations of character. Our only remark is, that in the glowing rapidity of these compositions, the student may be betrayed into a forgetfulness of the lessons which had formerly been given to him — as, for example, when

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following his great master, while he expatiates on the excellencies of truth and justice, he may be apt to lose sight of the argument by wdiich the system of utility had been so ably disposed of; and, because of the undoubted subservience of these two moralities to the good of society, which is chiefly dwelt upon in this passage of the work, is in some danger after all of becoming a utilitarian. It is here that the exuberant eloquence of Dr. Browm requires to be chastened by the more cautious statements of Dugald Stewart on this subject, in his " Outlines of Moral Philosophy.' 1 It is true that Dr. Brown had previously demonstrated, in grappling w 7 ith the theory of Hume, that though all the virtues were useful, it is not utility which constitutes all virtuousness ; and the actual harmony which obtains between the beneficial and the right, he regards as a contingent harmony, which he resolves into the will of God : so that, instead of perverting this great and undoubted fact, in order to vitiate the ethical system, he turns it to the proper and legitimate purpose of strengthening therewith the foundations of Natural Theology. And it is further true, that Dugald Stew r art concedes the possibility of benevolence, or a regard to utility, being the sole principle of action in the Deity. Instead of w r hich, we should look both on truth and justice as having an independent virtuousness of their own, even in the character of the Deity; nor can we help regarding the doctrine of the atonement, as a most impressive evidence in favour of this opinion, and as definitively

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XX fixing what, amid the contest of these great authorities, seems to be conjectural and loose in the speculations of philosophy. It appears to us, however, that Dr. Brown has fallen into an error which is not chargeable upon Stewart, when he affirms that for every duty between man and man, there is an obligation on the one side, and a counterpart right on the other. It is the duty of all men to be honest and true ; and all men have a right to the payment of the debts which are owing, or the fulfilment of the promises which have been made to them. But it follows not, that because it may be the duty of one man to be benevolent to another, this other has therefore a right to his benevolence. And it were a contradiction in terms to say, that when it may be the duty of one man to forgive an offender, the offender has therefore & right to forgiveness. It is therefore more than a factitious or scholastic distinction, which has been instituted between the duties of perfect and imperfect obligation, whatever objections may lie against the language which expresses it. The distinction itself has a real foundation in man's moral nature, and by not proceeding on it the most serious evils have been committed in the business of legislation.

But while we have held it our duty to point out some of the articles in his ethical creed on which we differ from our estimable author, we should hold it, at the same time, a most serious deficiency on the part of the ethical student, not to be fully acquainted with him. There are some doctrines in the science which xxii

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lie has done so much to illustrate and adorn, in which still there remains much to controvert and much to be settled, ere they can be so conclusively and fully established as to meet with universal acceptance. But the beauty of such moral pictures as he has drawn, and an enthusiasm like his on the side of goodness and truth, must find an echo in every bosom ; and will meet with an abiding testimony from men of wisdom and worth throughout all ages.

We can spare but one word for the Natural Theology, which concludes this volume. It deserves a high rank among the highest works of this class ; almost all of which, however, treat the subject without any the most distant attempt to assign the relation in which it stands to the Christian Theology. Now holding, as we do, that the most important function of the Natural, is that of guiding the way to our Revealed Theology, by evincing how it is that the desiderata of the one are met by the counterpart doctrines of the other, we cannot but express our preference for such treatises as serve to demonstrate the harmony between them, thus making Natural Theology fulfil the purpose ascribed to the law of bringing men to Christ.

These strictures on the works of Dr Brown, do not proceed from any feeling of hostility, but are prompted by our high sense of their importance. We could speak not merely of our great estimation, but of our personal gratitude for his writings. There is no author who has not expressly treated of revelation,

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xxiii whose mental philosophy suggests so many accordances between the science of mind and the subject-matter of Christianity. From the wide territory of thought over which he expatiates, there is no enlightened student, enlightened we mean both in philosophy and in holy writ, who might not gather from it fresh proofs and illustrations on the side of the Christian argument. And even for the practical objects, we are persuaded, whether of the Christian teacher whose office it is to prepare the weekly lessons of the pulpit for the instruction of his fellow-men, or of the Christian scholar who is bent on the advancement of his own personal religion — should either of them but dwell thoughtfully and intelligently on the pages of Dr. Brown, he will find, of many views which are given there of the workings of our nature, that they shed a pleasing and confirmatory light on what may be termed the moral dynamics of the gospel.